


Run This Town (While Ruining You)

by brokenmemento



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Harley Quinn (Comics), Poison Ivy (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Battle for Gotham, Drug Dealing, Eventual Smut, F/F, Slow Burn, Violence, but with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:55:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Everyone who’s anyone knows Mistah J runs the rings in Gotham. But someone new is giving him a run for his money and it’s Harley’s job to deal with this tiny little blip on Mistah J’s radar—albeit a very beautiful, red-headed one.
Relationships: Joker/Harleen Quinzel (mentioned), Pamela Isley & Harleen Quinzel, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 46
Kudos: 244





	1. Into the Darkness We Descend

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to probably be gritty considering the subject matter. So, warning for sex, drugs, violence, and language which will eventually cause the rating to go up. That being said, I want to handle it tastefully as well as believably because, at its heart, this is a falling in love story—just in a messed up world/situation. Also, Harley fully embraces her bisexuality and doesn’t have the same dynamic as she does in the comics with the Joker because...just gross. But he does make a damn good villain and my personal distaste for him overall was reason enough to craft my own story using his evil in a way I could tolerate. I’ve blended Ivy’s personalities from multiple works, a bit of the seductress and a bit of the smartass from the animated series.

**——-Prologue——**

The black pitch water looks as sinister as it’s backdrop, the docks of Gotham wretched in the sickly light lining the harbor. The port is deadly quiet but then again for the hour, it should be. 

It’s well past midnight, an hour when nothing good ever happens. But then again, this is Gotham and the underbelly of it is always teeming. The shadows are long and creep. The gunshots and explosions are the melodies of the blacktop streets. The story of the City of the Bat is about as bleak as the people who write it. 

For every one that works to build the town up on its foundation, there are another three to tear it down. It’s a terrible imbalance but one that is not likely to be righted. For now, the light still rises and the sun still sets every day on the roads paved with strife and the delicate hope that someday, this place might be more. 

The massive vessels parked in the harbor with shipping containers atop them exist in a domain that is almost untouchable, even by the man with all the world in his hands. Even here, there’s a hierarchy and few ever step out of line to question it. 

Keyword: few. But not none. 

Her heels click along the dock and up the gangplank, ascending to stand on the hard floor of the troller that’s pulled into the shallower waters. On the floor are several large compartments designated for sea life to be sold off to the high brow restaurants and the bits and pieces to the various holes in the wall throughout the city. 

Tonight though, this boat belongs to her. 

With the flick of a hand, she motions for two of the bodies flanking her side to open the hatches. Bending down, they raise the lids and she taps her manicured nails on the metal of the flashlight, clicking it on and bending down to examine the contents below. 

Peering into the hatch, the takes in the solidly packed blocks in heavy plastic wrapping. Ten to fifteen wide and just as many deep, she walks from hole to hole making sure everything is in order. When she’s seen enough to be satisfied, she thumbs off the beam of luminescence and stands up erectly. With a nod, she turns on a heel and immediately is tailed by two of the four goons she’d brought for the night. 

One offers her a hand on either side as she grips them and steps up onto the plank again, making her way down the dock and to the elongated vehicle waiting nearby. 

As she approaches, a rather imposing figure steps from the driver’s seat and crosses his hands in front of him, shoulders and neck not looking too separate from his head. Wordlessly, he opens the door and lets her slide gracefully in, shutting it behind her once she’s in. 

As they pull away from the docks and make their way out of the port, she watches the cityscape slide by. 

In the grand scheme of things, her operation is small but powerful enough to disrupt those who sit on their thrones of jewels and power. Even the good guys live more in the gray area than the light. Gotham has a way of taking even the most altruistic person and warping them a little. 

As she twirls the emerald around on her right ring finger, she is silently grateful that she has the good sense to know it. At least this way, there’s no way it can ever drag her down completely. 

**—-One—-**

Harley Quinn walked into the wide double doors of the funhouse, heavy wooden mallet resting on her shoulder. It’d been a long night, but that’s always when she’s able to do her best work. Daylight ain’t got nothing on her when she’s able to run wild and chaotic when the sun goes down. 

The blood is starting to flake off the surface of her weapon, the once red substance taking on a more copper hue. She props it against the wall and pulls the mask from her head, throwing it to the side and reaching up to pull her hair down from its ties. Throwing her head over, she shakes it out and then runs a hand through it to push most of it off to the side. 

Jobs like last night are messy but necessary. At least they are when you’re working for someone like Mistah J. In fact if it weren’t for her skills in agility and her penchant for mayhem, she’s sure she would have just been another broad on the streets. Instead, she’s the right-hand lady of one of the most powerful criminals in Gotham. 

To most, it wouldn’t be an illustrious job. What with overseein’ the running the blow and other narcotics throughout the town, but Harley has gotten pretty good at making sure things run smoothly. And if they don’t? Well, she just does a bit of cleanup with her trusty sidekick in hand. 

In her living quarters, she peels off the rest of the suit and opts for a pair of ass hugging shorts and a halter top. She knows he usually prefers her to report back to him in her official attire, but dammit, she’s just had a really good night and she feels like showing off a bit of skin. 

Not for him, of course. More for herself. And true, they’ve fucked around here and there in the past but their relationship is mostly a professional one. Harley prefers to spend much of her personal time with a hot and muscled up guy or a sexy as hell lady waiting for her in her sheets.

But shit’s been real busy lately, so all the fun has made her a little dull. The saying is pretty accurate if she does say so herself. Meandering into his workspace, she plops down on his desk and swings her legs up on the surface, popping a bubble from her gum rather loudly. 

“Harley, what in the fuck?” he growls and rises from his chair, straightening his garish tie. It’s his brand but Harley frowns at the flat out loudness of it. 

“You were right, Mistah J. They was skimmin’ of tha top of ya. I had to bring in my old trusty pal to take care o ‘em,” Harley explains through annoying smacks of cotton candy flavored bliss. 

“You’d think I wouldn’t have to deal with this menial shit anymore,” he grumbles, still in a mood and no doubt hating every second that Harley stays perched atop his desk. He eyes her dubiously and begins pacing across the floor. “Did you take a look at the latest shipment?”

“Everything looks ta be in order. They hadn’t had a chance yet ta pilfer the new goods. Looks like I got there just in time. That being said, word on the streets is that we’ve got some competition in tha market.”

He frowns deeply and steeples his fingers. In the wacky lights of the room, his hair looks even greener and the purple shock of his suit makes him look like such a tool. Harley would laugh if she didn’t have to dress up like the fucker half the time too. 

“Yes, I’ve heard those same murmurings.” He rounds to the side of his desk where she’s been perched and places a palm beside her body, leaning in. “And do you know how I feel about people encroaching on my territory?” 

She’s pretty sure she does, considering he’s worse than a male dog marking everything in sight. The bulk of Gotham knows that Mistah J runs things and everyone else sits backseat. And if they get outta line? That’s where Harley steps in.

It’s sorta ridiculous that her 5’5, 110 pound frame is depended on to keep people in their lane. Though she be but little, though, she is fierce and that makes what she does all the more successful. She pops her gum again and nods. 

“You say the word and I’m ya girl,” Harley reminds. 

He jerks away and straightens up to his full height. “Good. Find out who is trying to buy Park Place and then burn it to the ground, eh Puddin’?”

“Sure thing, Mistah J.”

Oh, she feels so sorry for whoever is about ta get it. 

///-///

She lets out a bored sigh and looks at the dolt in front of her. Bringing a hand up, she rubs the bridge of her nose and then works to gather herself. 

Rolling her neck from one side and then to the other, she stretches her arms wide and rests her elbows against the chair. Her gaze is steely, green eyes burning holes in the body they’re fixed on. 

“I do believe you’ve mistaken me,” she says airily, dismissive. 

The man (what’s his name again? Oh, no nevermind) knits his brows together and she can practically see him beginning to sweat. Somehow, he has the balls to open his mouth and speak. “Uh, no? You are the lady I was told to come see.”

She rises from her chair and saunters to where the man stands, wooden crates open and lined with every kind of drug known to man-except for the specific one she deals in. Striking out, she grabs his cheeks roughly between her forefinger and thumb. The motion jerks his head up and is probably jarring. Good. 

“I do not deal in this shit,” she all but spits. “My trade is only in organic substances. Whatever you goons are cooking in your labs with rat poison, toilet bowl cleaner, or whatever else you morons throw into it without blowing yourself to bits is of no use to me.” 

“But if you’re ever gonna best out Mister Jack as the true kingpin…” he stops and eyes her warily, then amends himself. “Queen Pin, you’re gonna have to start dealin’ like everyone else around here.”

At precisely this point, she buries a slug in his left kneecap, shattering it. Holding the gun out to her waiting henchmen, she tries to block out the agonizing screams erupting in the room. 

“Don’t aim to tell me how to conduct my business or what pursuits to spend my time on. No man will bring me down, Jack especially,” she warns. 

The blood is coming in earnest now and she looks at him with a rather blank look on her own face. 

“You poisonous bitch! You’ll regret this!” The unnamed goon really is high on his courage today. 

“And don’t you forget it. Take him and drop him off at the funhouse. Maybe give the clown a nice little note to say this fine gentleman was trying to go against the famous Joking Jackal of Gotham.” She smiles all saccharine as the man is hauled up by his armpits. 

“You’re crazy! They’ll kill me. Mister Jack always wins! Even Mister Oswald knows that! That’s why he sent me here to bring you into the loop!”

“I’ve got no interest in rubbing members with the boy’s club. I’ve got my own little nicely carved slice of life here and I’m not looking to do a team-up. People really aren’t my thing, darling. You meat sacks are only good for one thing: to use and dispose of.”

Smiling, she blows him a kiss and watches as he is dragged off kicking and screaming (what’s left of his kneecap too) into the distance. She sighs and glances down at her watch. 

It’s already been a day and it’s only halfway through. She can practically taste the sweet liquor in her throat as she closes her eyes and thinks about her favorite booth downtown. Yes, tonight is definitely going to be a night for her to raze the town. 

And who knows—if she’s feeling like it, maybe a little debauchery too. 

After all, it has been _a while_. And that simply won’t do. 


	2. Club Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meetings and research based dancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Song that they ladies dance to in the club is "Realla" by TokiMonsta and Anderson Paak. It's pure sensuality and gives the perfect vibe for that scene in the story

Alright, so it’s taken a little longer to deal with Mistah J’s very big problem. 

So much so that she’s had to track the woman’s movements for a couple of weeks now to see if any patterns develop. From her ugly as hell mom van, Harley slouches lower in the seat and pushes her sunglasses up against her eyes.

A motorcycle is too impractical, he said. A sedan essentially the equivalent of calling that asswipe Gordon and narcin’ on the whole operation. Who’s gonna suspect a desperate in suburbia type vehicle as part of a detailed drug ring? 

_Definitely more should_ , Harley thinks. In fact, that would be the first place she would check if she were a piggy. It’s always the ones that look least likely that end up havin’ the biggest secrets. 

Shattering her daydream, she watches as the woman exits the building. The sunlight catches in the long strands of her red hair and Harley watches the sway of her hips, accentuated by a tight olive green dress and legs that go on for miles with matching heels at the tips of them. 

Gah, what a fine piece of ass. But classy ladies like that are usually too far out of Harley’s league. Oh, who is she kidding? This one’s in a different stratosphere and besides, she’s the enemy here. Puddin’ specifically sent Harley to disrupt this lady’s risky business. And that’s exactly what Harley intends to do. 

…That’s if she can ever come up with a plan. One’s surely gotta be bakin’ up there, so she pokes at her temple a little and wills one to take root. 

What’s today again? Thursday? Grumbling, she withdraws her phone from the pocket of her shorts. _Totally a fun placement of it if it were to buzz_. The screen is a little cracked, (job hazard) but she can make out the word below the time: Wednesday. Ack! One day off. So close. 

That’s when it hits. 

Sometimes, fancy drug lady likes to hit up one of the new bars downtown. At least that’s what she’s heard. Harley has been in there with Mista J and the rest of his cronies from time to time, but she’s always been too busy focusin’ on their crew to even process that maybe the banging redhead had also been in attendance. 

If Harley plans on gettin’ an audience with her, she better make sure she has all her ducks in a row. Mistah J would surely approve of this, so she decides to leave him outta it. All he’ll do is get all yell-y if he doesn’t like it or take credit for it if he does, so she’ll just tell him after and hope he likes it.

That’s if the fancy drug lady plays nice. 

Something tells Harley that isn’t really her m.o though. That being the case, Harley supposes she will just have to make sure she does. 

She’s pretty sure she’s got what it takes. Most people like her most of the time because really, she’s a people person. At least she thinks so because she only really has beef with the people Mistah J has beef with. And while she can be pretty confrontational if someone gets outta line, she’d much rather have a good time. 

With a little reminder of Mistah J’s patronage, she’s sure the Peregrinator's Club will let her in without the usual entourage of characters. That is if she can find the right threads to knock the socks off tha place. Or the hose.

Because really, the only person’s eyes she needs on her is fancy drug lady's. 

Pulling out away from the curb, she peels out and leaves tread marks on the asphalt. What should take twenty minutes only really takes twelve and before she knows it, she’s standing back in her room at the funhouse and throwing both the doors open to her closet. 

Stripping down to just her bra and underwear, she begins pulling out various pieces of this and that, holding it up in the mirror to judge appropriateness. It’s gotta be a bombshell combo of sophistication and sex, of class and suavity. 

She decides on a fairly new number that she’s not had the chance to wear. For a second, she thinks about saving the look for Mistah J but they’ve been in a surprisingly nice place where he doesn’t ask her to come play in his bed and she sure as hell don’t go lookin’. Harley doesn’t much care who he’s spending his time with because it keeps his eyes off’a her, which is just fine.

Harley throws the red silk piece onto her bed and a rogue tendril of a thought curls around her brain like a lazy house cat. _Like the color of her hair._

Really, what the fuck? Yeah, so it’s been a whole minute since she’s done some good entertainin’ in the sheets department, what with trying to help Mistah J run the city and all, but Red isn’t a basket Harley needs to be putting her chickens in. Or even near. And while it might be a little fun to know exactly how those saucy hips move in other places, much more intimate ones, Harley has a job to do and losin’ sight of it for a romp in the sack is the kind of short-sighted vision Mistah J doesn’t need to accuse her of having again. 

Harley decides to leave her hair down, but she does throw it on some curlers, afterward shaving literally everything she can get to. She meticulously does her makeup, a bit more sophisticated than is her usual style. After all, this club will require more restraint than the usual ones Mistah J and his goons use as a watering hole. Sure, sure, he likes the club, but it’s a little stuffy for his taste mosta the time, so they just hang out where he can take over. 

By the time she’s managed to finish the basic details of the night out, she pulls on the red silk and watches it hug her body perfectly. She chooses a pair of stilettos to send her upward a few inches. Her legs look real good in the dress and heels. That makes her smile. 

She tries to keep her body in tip-top shape. Harley has always been athletic, involved in gymnastics and such, so she convinced Mistah J to get some equipment in one of the rooms so she could use it when she wasn’t on a job. Now, appraising herself one the mirror, she sees that her hard work continues to pay off. 

The only thing she wishes she could change are a few pieces of ink that color her skin. Fancy drug lady doesn’t have any from what Harley can tell and she doesn’t want to seem low brow or anything. Which she’s not, thank you very much. 

Once upon a time, she used to be someone different. Maybe even someone special. She’s done the college thing and even the doctorate thing which it seems like a whole lotta people forget, including herself sometimes. But then Mistah J happened and he sure has a way of takin' something and twistin' it all around. 

Eh, whatever. She still looks bangin’, so she runs her hands through her curls to toss them this way and that, jutting her hips in poses to assess her ability to slay. _Forecast=high._

Grabbing a small clutch, she bursts from her room and makes her way out of the funhouse. The sun is setting and the evening looks to be nice so she decides to get one of J’s goons to take her downtown. No sense messin' up the good thing she’s got goin' by taking one of the smoother open-topped rides. 

Harley snaps her fingers as she walks by one of the men and he jumps to attention to follow her. “So I’m goin' downtown tonight on some business. I’ll need you boys ta be ready in case somethin’ happens,” Harley explains. “Which it probably won’t, fingers crossed. I’d much rather have a bit o’ fun instead of whackin’ a few skulls. Still, be prepped.”

She should probably do some research, talk to some more people. But fancy drug lady seems to live on vapor and smoke. People know of her, sure, but she keeps her head underground most of the time...unless she’s screwin’ with Mistah J. Which she seems to be really good at. But tonight, it’s time for her to come out and play. 

Harley struts into the bar, oozing sex and wildness. She’s more than aware of several sets of wide eyes as she passes, sashaying to the bar and ordering a Cosmopolitan. What? That’s what these fancy shits order and she likes the sugar, so she takes a delicate sip and scans the club for the usual cast of characters.

She noticed Basil Karlo’s crew milling about, along with a smattering of others such as Eddie Nygma and some of Carmine Falcone’s boys. All in all, it’s a pretty good showing from the criminal underbelly of the city, at least the ones who are running dope. Most of these guys are small potatoes though compared to J, so Harley doesn’t pay much mind to any of them, instead getting a bit sloshed with every kind of martini the barback can sling her way.

When she’s thrown about three good drinks down her gullet, she looks up from her spot at the bar and to one of the back booths. Her throat goes dry. _She’s here._

Even though the club is dark around the seating areas to create the ambiance of intimacy, Harley can make out every detail of fancy drug lady. 

She sits with her legs crossed, a deep hunter colored pair of slacks cut perfectly on them and her hips. On her top half, a matching blazer is tailored just as elegantly. Beneath the jacket, a shimmering strip of black satin that almost looks iridescent under the club’s lights covers her ample bosom, leaving a fair bit of her décolletage and flat stomach blissfully bare. Between her breasts, a dark pendant rests and her ears sport a similar style when she brushes back the soft curls of her flame red hair. Her eyes look out across the expanse of the club, mild amusement etching her features as she wraps a well-manicured hand with blunt tips across her tumbler of amber liquid.

 _A whiskey girl_ , Harley thinks. She licks her lips without the help of her brain. 

“Can I get you anything else, Ms. Quinn?” the no bartender asks. 

“Nah,” she murmurs, patting at his crisply laundered shirt absently. “I see something else I like.”

///-///

The day hadn’t improved much, but now she’s in her favorite booth and sipping on a Dalmore 62 single highland malt scotch, the liquid-like velvet slipping down her throat, and she can’t find it in herself to dwell on the events of the last twenty-four hours. 

Cocking her head to the side, she watches with twinkling eyes as a bleach bottle blonde makes her way forward. Before the girl even gets near the booth, she knows her trajectory includes the very place she’s sitting. 

She’s all skin and sin, red dress sitting pretty on her hips and what seems like miles of pale skin on display to the world. Some of it has various...artwork, if one could call it that, an amalgam of pictures and script. Those bleached blonde locks are candy swirled on the ends, the pink and blue mixing together as it is thrown about her head in a disheveled and delicious way. 

One of the brutish bits of muscle she employs steps forward, meaty palm extended up to stop the progress of the blonde whose face has become etched with a sense of determination that manages to curl her lips into a small and amused smile. 

“Turn back around, ma’am. Ms. Isley is not entertaining guests tonight,” he barks. Surprisingly, the girl doesn’t flinch and flicks her eyes behind him to the booth. 

“What a shame. Here I was hoping Ms. Isley would do me tha honor of a dance,” she answers defiantly. 

Oh, well now. This is surely getting good. 

Rising from her spot, she makes her way over to the blonde who follows every measured step that gets placed on the club’s floor. When she’s standing over her on the step of the booth, the blonde fixes sky blue eyes on her green ones and never lets go. 

“Miss Isley,” she nods and does a halfway curtesy. _How truly ridiculous_. 

“Call me Pamela,” Pamela answers, all smoke and honey. “Let’s not get too formal. And who might you be?” 

But she already knows. The second she’d appeared from behind the other bodies in the club and approached with her determined jaw, Pamela had known that this was Harley Quinn, the Clown King of Gotham’s Maiden of Mayhem. 

Pamela extends a hand and Harley grips it a bit firmly, squeaking at her own force and then looks up as their skin meets for the first time. While more reserved, Pamela feels the same static charge as their fingers brush against one another. The mumble of the girl’s introduction almost goes unheard. 

“Well, Ms. Quinn…”

“Harley,” she lets go of Pamela’s hand quickly and darts her eyes back up, seeming to realize she’s cut off Pamela from speaking. She shrugs to play it off. “Just Harley.” 

“Alright, Harley,” Pamela acquiesces. “I regret to inform you that I’m not much of a dancer. It’s not something that I indulge much in, if ever.”

A frown spreads across Harley’s face. “How’s that any fun? You come to a club but don’t do no dancin’?” 

Pamela bristles a little at the thick New York accent, the gerunds terribly mangled by the dropping of the last letter. She works to smooth her face out. 

“I’m not convinced that the activity is worth the time spent on it nor lives up to its expectation,” she replies evenly. 

“You musta had the wrong type of partners then,” Harley shoots back quickly, like a challenge, and Pamela can’t help but quirk her eyebrow. “It’s all about timing and body movement and actually lettin' a partner work with ya. Come on, Red. Let me show ya how it’s supposed ta be done.”

Muscled brute steps forward to redirect what he believes is Harley’s hellbent course, one ready for collision because of the use of the nickname, a blatant disrespect to his employer who is one of the rising forces in Gotham. Pamela stops him with a delicate touch to his shoulder, lacquered nails tapping against his trapezius. 

Descending the step, she jerks her head to the side to dismiss him and he retreats back into the faint light of the roped-off booth. Now, Pamela is standing directly in front of Harley, their eyes never leaving one another’s. 

_Damn, this chaotic little storm_. Pamela revels in it deliciously. 

If Harley were any other person, Pamela would definitely be taking her into a back room right now. But since she’s Mista J’s little lady, Pamela tries to excise some control over the white-hot flash of desire pooling low in her belly. 

She leans in with her voice wrapped in silk. “You get one dance, _sweet pea_.”

Harley spins around on a heel tip and Pamela doesn’t even try to hide her gaze on her backside as she walks away. Because she’s putting on a show and Pamela sees it as clear as day. With each step, she’s performing, trying to draw Pamela in. 

But Pamela is no moth. If anything, she’s a wolf. She doesn’t go blindly into flame, instead cognizant of what’s happening, circling like she’s always done before deciding to pounce. 

The speakers fill with the next song, a synthy and thumping beat that is probably bad for the two of them to dance to together. Harley stands in front of her expectantly once on the dance floor, so Pamela comes close, a whisper of a breath away. 

She could lead this, but she’s more than curious to see how this Harley Quinn is going to play her hand. As if seeming to sense this, Harley reaches out a tentative hand and rests her forearm on Pamela’s shoulder. Green eyes trace down the length of it and catch blue, locking. 

_My new fire, you ought to come to light me_

_Around this time I only want you here_

Harley has them lightly swaying, but Pamela is yet to lay a finger on her. Suddenly though, Harley is spinning so that her hips and ass are pressing flush against Pamela’s front and she can’t help it, her hands find the bones in Harley’s waist. 

_It's hard to sleep when your body's in arms reach_

_My mind is a Grand Prix_

_I'm liable to step out and go drive a few blocks East_

_To rendezvous at the spot where two shy folks become beast_

Fingers are threading through the curls of Pamela’s hair, snaking to wrap hotly around the smooth skin at her neck. Breath ghosts across Harley’s exposed shoulder as they sway together and _damn_ , this is almost too much. 

Their rhythm is perfectly in sync and by now, surely Harley has picked up on the lie Pamela told earlier about lacking the skill for dancing. She’s as elegant as a swan gliding across water, knows just the right way to dip and bend her body to line up with the beat and cadence of the music flowing into the area. Harley brings it out of her, so adept with her own movements that Pamela doesn’t worry about getting caught outside of the truth. 

Pamela notices the rapid rise and fall of Harley’s flushed chest, not being able to fault the poor thing because the air leaving her own lungs is like a stutter step. Simply put, they’re dark magic and desire together. The whole goddamn club is probably watching them right now and while normally Pamela would care, she can’t muster the wherewithal to mind. 

When the music finally trails off, Pamela can feel the apprehension in the woman’s body thrumming directly into her fingertips, scorching everything. Something else starts up, but Pamela isn’t listening, only watching as Harley’s mouth hangs open and her lips glisten in the faint light of the club. 

She places a shaky hand on Pamela’s blazer, runs her fingers down the lapel of it. “Take me home, Red.” It’s so frayed when it leaves her mouth that she bites her lip after she’s said it, worrying it between her teeth. 

Just as Pamela opens her mouth to speak, muscular brute number two is in her ear, saying words she has to rework in her mind to understand. The whole time, she never lets her sight waver from Harley whose own features furrow. 

Pursing her lips, Pamela runs a hand through her hair and lets out a long sigh. Stepping a little closer, she tries to let her voice be pushed out over the music. “Business, as always.” It’s meant to be placating, but Harley looks as if she’s just been slapped. Pamela leans in and presses a chaste kiss to her cheek. “Don’t be a stranger, Harley.”

Turning, she leaves Harley in the middle of the dance floor, drowning inside her own body. 


	3. No Hero Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Joker is...the Joker, Harley is on the receiving end, Pamela saves the day, sort of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Violence warning for the chapter. I don't think it's overly graphic or out of character for the Joker's behavior, but be aware that is part of this chapter.

An ax flies through the air and buries deeply into the wall, a sick splintering sound filling the room. Another whiffs by in quick succession. A guttural growl bounces off the wall as J slams a fist into the plaster, a cloud of particles puffing out into the air. 

“Another fucking shipment less than last month!” he screams and Harley raises a tired eyebrow, letting him throw his tantrum. 

It’s not the first. It will definitely not be his last. 

He yanks an ax out of the wall and glares at Harley. “My other product is moving just fine,” he tries to calm himself with a roll of his shoulders, “but I can’t _give_ my pot away because someone else is flooding the streets with ‘better shit.’ I might as well light it on fire and bake half of Gotham for the losses I’m going to take on this. What in the _fuck_ have you been doing lately? I told you to solve this.”

When she doesn’t say anything, his eyes glare with an unspeakable amount of venom. Oh, yes. It’s her cue now. 

“I just found out who tha culprit was last night,” Harley finally admits. She tries not to close her eyes and think of the phantom feel of the woman against her back. Nope, better keep that under wraps. 

“I’m waiting,” J says through gritted teeth. Idly, Harley wonders how close they are to cracking. 

“Seems like Pamela Isley is only in the cannabis business. Something about solely focusing on naturally occurring substances or whatever.” Harley waves a hand in faux disinterest.

What she doesn’t mention is that fancy drug lady aka Pamela Lillian Isley is also _Dr_. Isley and has been working to engineer different strands of her product that increases the potency and also refrain from utilizing pesticides, fertilizers, or any other chemical byproducts. It’s grade A, straight from the ground shit and Harley can see why Gotham’s low lives are in a froth about it. 

Not that she does any of the stuff her and Mistah J sling. Sure, she’s dabbled a little here and there, but she doesn’t put nothin’ in her veins or up her nose. She never saw the appeal and doesn’t much like the effects of some stuff, so she leaves it alone. No, the draw to the drug game is the notoriety, the fame, the money—all of the pure edge of life living and adrenaline that comes with being on the wrong (or right) side of the good guys. 

Mistah J’s lips twist into a severe smile. “I truly am sadistically brilliant.” He sweeps his arms open wide. “Get ready for the biggest assignment you’ve ever done for me, Harley-girl.”

She eyes him dubiously but can’t help the spike of adrenaline rising too. If she pleases him, maybe she can get off of doing his bidding and instead, help him focus on more of the logistics. To be the brains instead of the muscle. 

“Whatzzat, Mistah J?”

She watches him sail another ax into the wall. He turns on a heel and says, as if it’s the most simple thing ever, “You’re going to torch one of her warehouses to the ground. Instead of sending my shit out on the wind, we are gonna do hers.”

Harley chokes on the water she’d been drinking and squeezes the plastic bottle between her fingers. “I just found out who she is! How tha hell am I gonna hit one of her places?”

He strides across the floor and grabs her roughly by the back of the neck, like a mamma lion romping on her cub. And he does this sometimes, gets physical. 

Harley could handle herself, but she’d rather get smacked around a little while still getting a slice of the pie as opposed to retaliating back and winding up super dead. 

“You’ve got forty-eight hours and I better be watching the greater part of Gotham get high as a kite from her primo stuff. No dicking around, Harley-girl. Get results or you’ll think twice about dragging your feet with me.”

When he shoves her roughly toward the door, she knows the conversation is done. 

Quadruple marks turn blue-black against her neck as she follows tip after rumbling of where to find one of Pamela Isley’s storehouses. Sometimes it comes while standing under a weak streetlight in a darker corner of Gotham, where no names are exchanged and people tend to materialize in and out of the shadows. Other times, it eeks out from the brunt of her bat on someone’s knee cap or elbow. Whatever it takes to get the job done. 

Which is how she’s come to sit outside Monolith Square. The botanical gardens are a few blocks west and Harley hopes when she straps a coupla blocks of C4 to the side of fancy drug lady’s warehouse (Pamela? Red? Ms. Isley? Ack) that she doesn’t take much else out in its blast radius. 

Those haunting green eyes flood her vision again though as she’s standing by the trunk and looking down at the bricks. She grips the metal underneath her fingers tightly and tries to settle her breathing. 

She _deserves_ this. She’s skimming business off Mistah J! And when business is bad for Mista J, Harley is usually pretty miserable. 

But oh, how that woman had thrown Harley through a loop the other night. It’s not like that happens often either. Usually when she gets amused by somethin, she takes it. What she had experienced with Pamela Isley was nothing short of knockin her down at the knees. 

Her stupid rogue brain had then crafted some very vivid scenarios—Harley’s pale hands inching further under that green jacket, skimming across a taut stomach. About how the flesh of the woman’s hips might feel in her palms or how her lips could still hold some of the dark amber she had been sipping before Harley had approached.

And even though Pamela Isley was supposed to be danger on legs, Harley had sensed something gentle and calming beneath the heat too. Like maybe there was something in her that people could lose themselves in. 

Harley’s eyes jolt open, unaware that she had even closed them. Her mouth is dry and she is missing her standard amount of air that she usually requires to breathe. “I can’t do this,” she shocks herself by saying. 

There is not one part of the red-haired phoenix that she knows, but she feels an odd sense of allegiance to her, another woman caught in the cog work of a man’s world. _Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone..._

Before she has time to process what’s happening, the car trunk comes down with lightning speed. While her reaction time is pretty sharp, two of her fingers don’t fare so well in the downward push. She doubles over, bare knees scraping the concrete as she falls to the ground, gripping her shattered digits. 

Through the tears springing in her eyes, she sees J’s sneer. He is flanked on either side by his boy’s club. 

“Time: 48:07 and I’m not seeing a bonfire behind me,” he says icily. She’s got a good angle to swing her legs out and snap his ankles, but the thought fizzles away as he has her staring down a gun barrel seconds later. “Na-ah. Whatever half-cocked idea you're brewing, toss it out. Oh, you’re such a dimwit. Your face is _so_ easy to read.” 

He bends down and she can smell the musk of him, the aftershave clinging on for dear life. “I saw it in your face at the funhouse. A little indecisive if I do say so myself. But who can blame you, right? After all, you were seen rubbing up on the competition like a wanton slut.” 

Harley’s mouth drops open and he backs away with an evil snarl. “I didn’t…”

The words get smacked out of her mouth as he brings a fist across her cheek. “I dare say, I should have known better, but I didn’t expect you to get attached so quickly. But you do kind of latch onto things that show you even the slightest bit of attention.” He points the gun at her again. “What do you say? Let’s draw your sexy siren out, shall we?”

The gunshot she’s expecting never comes, but a stabbing pain erupts in her chest. Falling to her knees, she tries to reach up with her non-broken fingers to pull the knife out of her back. She can’t reach it though. 

Blood begins to seep. The staggering flare of pain rips through her body and she fights to stay awake. She loses herself to darkness, the hilt of the knife buried in her and pointing to the sky. 

///-///

She tries to sit upright, gasping for air but falls back and clutches at her chest, tears sliding down her cheeks. When the pain eases to a notch below excruciating, she bends a little and works to push aside the fabric of the top. 

That’s when she notices her bound fingers in a splint, throbbing below the setting. Her face feels sore too and she doesn’t even want to imagine what nightmare it looks like. 

With her useful digits, she pushes the strap of her tank aside. Below, a thick bandage is splotched with copper blood and the tape around it itches against her skin.

Whimpering, she falls back again and takes in her surroundings. 

She’s in a comfortable bed, sheets bunched at her waist now. Everything around is mahogany or oak: desks, chairs, shelves that hold winding vines and other types of plants Harley has never seen in her entire life. A large area rug covers the space and an expansive marbled glass window lets in faint ambient light. 

Nothing looks familiar, but everything hurts and she can’t keep up with the waves of ache that ebb and flow enough to worry when someone’s clearly patched her up. When the next bout of pain sends her spiraling, her vision wanes. 

Cool air hits her shoulder and neck then and the skirting of fingers. Harley surges forward with all of her might, screaming at her once gymnast body to cooperate. Her hand shoots for a throat and even though she’d like to squeeze, she has no energy in her body to do so. 

When the dizziness clears and she’s able to focus, green eyes bore into hers. Immediately, she drops her hand, and is that a yelp she just made? “Red,” she chokes out. 

Pamela watches her intently, long and slender fingers brushing against where Harley’s had just been pressed seconds ago. She says nothing but doesn’t avert her gaze away from Harley as she moves slowly, making a show of keeping her hands directly in front of her. 

Gently, she inches the tank top up Harley’s torso and past her breasts, moving the neck of it aside and bringing a nail up to unstick the medical tape and peel away the bandage and gauze. Below the square patch is a line of about six stitches. 

Harley’s mouth drops open but Pamela fills the room with speech. “Stab wound to the shoulder and chest. Not very inventive but incredibly painful since the blade was serrated. Thank goodness it wasn’t any lower or we are talking about hitting organs then.”

Listening to her is like hearing a bedtime story and being tucked in at night, only this tale is the one about how Harley got fucking _stabbed_ instead of something nice and warm to send her to the land of slumber. 

“I should have finished the job,” Pamela adds rather coldly. “After what you assholes did to my warehouse.”

Oh, shit, the warehouse. Does C4 leave a residue like a gun does? But wait! She didn’t actually set the charges! She’d just driven to the square with all of it loaded and ready to go. That’s as far as she got. 

“Red, I didn’t…”

The other woman makes a humming sound low in her throat and that’s when Harley notices she still has her hand on Harley’s wound, leisurely tracing the puckered and bruising flesh. It moves to the ruined curve of her eye, purple and green splotches all over.

“I know,” Pamela admits. “My anger toward you was semi misplaced, but you don’t exactly get a pass because you work for that cretin.” The disdain drips from every syllable she forms with her mouth. 

But there are her hands and her eyes and is that jasmine Harley can smell? She’s practically swooning and doesn’t want to talk about her boss, the one who just cold-cocked her and made another scar on her body, one more to go in a litany of others. 

“Tha stitches,” Harley shakes her head. “Who patched me up? I can’t be near a hospital anywhere in Gotham because they all know I’m Mistah J’s. You’re right. I should be dead.”

Harley watches as Pamela stands and reaches for a medical supply kit atop the desk. Easing back onto the bed, she begins to clean and redress the wound, all silently. When she runs the pad of her thumb across the medical tape to make it stick, Harley hisses at the contact (for a number of reasons). 

Her hands go to her lap and she sighs tiredly. “I packed the wound and set your hand. Fairly standard procedures for both. I also did your sutures.” 

“You’re a doctor,” Harley says aloud, not asking for clarification but to remind herself of the details the trauma may have dislodged. 

“Just a plant one,” Pamela actually smiles and why does it feel like the sun has risen? “But I did test out being an M.D. before I decided I didn’t much care for people.”

“Then why’d ya save me? You know who I work for, what I was doin’ at your place.”

“This may come as a surprise to you, but I’m not keen on starting a war, which your demise would have most certainly done. While I don’t relish in the idea of letting him get away with what he’s done to you, my interests are broad and pursuits many. Retaliation is not on my docket,” Pamela informs but then glances back at Harley’s covered wound, shirt still rucked up tucked over the swell of her breasts. “Yet.”

The last bit is tacked in quietly. Harley motions to the top and Pamela helps her readjust, lowering it and leaving Harley to shift uncomfortably.

“Thanks, Red,” she tells her. 

“Don’t thank me quite so soon. Gather your energy. Once you’ve healed sufficiently to make your own way, you will be required to leave my home and go back to whatever nightmare I dragged you out of. But after tonight, I’ve got my own to attend to.”

“Your warehouse?” Harley tries to sound hopeful but knows better. J doesn’t do anything half-assed. 

“Nothing but smoke and ash,” Pamela answers and slips out the door like the exhaust of her warehouse. 

Sometime later (hours? days?) Harley feels a different kind of ache in her upper body, this time dull. It’s hard to get a good breath and every inhale feels like fire. Swinging her legs over the bed, she gingerly makes her way to the door and peers out. 

The living space is covered with just as much foliage, if not more, a practical living jungle inside. Off to the side, a large modern kitchen glistens with cleanliness and Harley’s stomach rumbles at the thought of food being prepped with its square footage. 

She startles when she sees the woman on the couch, glasses perched over her nose, and a book held between her fingers. Her eyes peer up from the pages at Harley frozen between the living room and kitchen. She plants her feet on the ground and stands, black silk shorty pajamas shifting with each step she takes. The closer she gets, the more defined her freckled shoulders become under the spaghetti straps.

“Is everything alright?” Pamela asks, looking at Harley’s as if she can see through her shirt to her injury. 

“I was just a little...hungry,” Harley says embarrassed. She’s gotten a free patch up job and cushy place to stay, so now she’s gonna swindle this woman out of something to eat too? Talk about working it heavily…

Her green eyes flit to the kitchen and her brows furrow. “I’m not the best of cooks—”

“Nor or ya a very good dancer,” Harley interjects with a laugh. She’s almost worried she’s overstepped _again_ until Pamela laughs too and Harley thinks maybe she sees a pinking of the woman’s cheeks. 

“Right...I may have some things for a garden-style omelet? I mean, I have the ingredients for more than that but that’s something I know how to put together relatively quick.” She doesn’t wait for an answer as she pads into the kitchen and sets to work. 

In no time, a beautifully golden and piping hot omelet is sitting in front of Harley, colorful bell peppers and onion, tomatoes and mushrooms filling the fluffy eggs. 

Harley practically drools and reaches for the fork that Pamela has placed beside her. She makes a face as she tries to pick it up with her left hand. Harley knows Pamela is watching her with an amused expression but Harley ignores her, finally getting the utensil situated. On the first bite, she actually moans as her eyes flutter closed. 

When she opens them, she can see Pamela trying to stifle a laugh and it’s very hard to think this kind and captivating woman is one of the biggest faces in Gotham’s drug game today. 

“I don’t understand. Why are ya bein’ so nice ta me?” Harley asks aloud as Pamela sits a glass of orange juice beside her plate. 

“You mean treating you like a person?” she scoffs. 

Harley frowns. “Well, yeah, maybe. You said it yourself—I work for Mista J. You should be my enemy. I should be yours.”

“Things aren’t always that black and white, sweet pea,” Pamela says softly. 

And there it is again. 

Harley knows she’s been calling her nothing but a nickname since she walked into the club, but she’s always like that. Those types of words are easy to throw around, unlike this woman who doesn’t seem to utter a single thing without great thought behind it. 

“What do ya mean?” Harley decides to press. 

Pamela watches her but doesn’t say anything. Placing her palms down on the countertop, she pushes herself away. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, I’ve got an event to attend so I’m afraid your welcome is expiring.”

“Event?”

“I...yes. Business,” Pamela offers vaguely and then sees Harley’s face, can already tell she’s going to ask for more. “A different kind of business. The gray area, so to speak.”

“I thought ya only ran around selling your fancy pot and hemp ta people. What else do ya even have time for?” Harley stabs a bit of omelet and deposits it in her mouth. 

Pamela’s lips quirk slightly. “No.” When she appraises Harley, whatever secrecy she is holding onto dissipates a little. “This city is poison, Harley. But luckily, I thrive well in that type of environment. That being said, I do long for this place to be more than it is, more than just a town where darkness and chaos thrive. The landscape could transform from steel and brick and glass to gardens and ponds and parks.”

Harley snorts. “In Gotham? It’s a pretty vision, Pammy, but I’m not sure there are enough people in this place that have your dream.”

“Your accent…”

“Wha—what?” Harley stammers. “Whadda bout it?”

Pamela shakes her head and looks pensive. “It comes and goes. Sometimes it’s very heavy and then you just drop it, like it’s some weight you’ve been carrying.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, well um...see. Mista J and I watch a lotta old shows, mostly stuff from the ’50s. Those are his favorites, he says. And he always laughs at ‘em. They put a smile on his face. I thought that maybe if I could sorta blend what I already got with a little bit of that…”

She trails off, not exactly knowing where to go. The omelet begins to feel leaden and Harley puts down her fork, embarrassed again. Pam must think she’s a complete fool, admitting this secret she’s kept tucked down. About how she’s been performing for the sake of maybe catching a little bit of favor with Mista J instead of always having to worry about what comes next.

“And...how’s that working for you?”

“Obviously it’s not because he fucking stabbed me!” Harley finally squeezes out, like a balloon losing the air and flying all around the room. She covers her mouth quickly, shocked at the volume and tone she’s used. Her face goes gooey and she looks at Pamela. “God, I’m so sorry. It’s just…” She huffs and ruffles some of the blonde strands that have fallen into her eyes. “I appreciate your hospitality and all but I know I gotta go back there because even though he had me stabbed, he expects me to show up again, you know?”

“You could leave” is spoken so quiet, Harley almost misses it. Those mysterious green orbs find Harley. “You’re only saved if you leave that place.”

And Harley must look like a fish flopping around on the dry ground because a whole new world is opening up with even the mere insinuation from the words. If she closes her eyes, goes inside her mind’s eye, she can see a life where kindness reigns over chaos, where caresses rival and defeat painful blows. Where there is light and beauty and bright swaths of strawberry hair...

“Red…”

Harley watches as Pamela bites the inside of her cheek and motions off to the side. “There’s a bathroom in there, fresh towels in the closet,” she breezes past what she’d said that held such heaviness only moments before. “You’re welcome to clean up. I’ll be nearby if you need any help.”

Harley nods tightly and stands, done with the idea of any more food. Her body does ache in multiple places and maybe a shower or bath or whatever will do some good. Crossing the living room slowly, she walks into the room and sees a large claw foot bathtub, a vintage look to it, sitting against the wall. She watches as Pamela turns on the taps and removes the terrycloth for Harley to use after. When Harley doesn’t make a move to get rid of her clothing, Pamela seems to pick up on that and lets a little sound out. 

“Oh, right. I’ll just be…” she points for the door. “Unless you need help. Harley shakes her head and Pamela leaves her alone with some privacy. 

Starting with peeling off the tank (which takes forever) and her more than ruined shorts, Harley gets rid of her garments and uses her shaky limbs to sink slowly into the hot water. She hisses as it covers her skin and begins to work against her muscles. It’s nice and the longer she lets the liquid sit against her flesh, the more she can feel herself relaxing. 

Somewhere between it all, she drifts off and is startled when there is a faint knock on the door. “Everything okay in there?” is the muffled query asked from the other side of the wood. 

Harley sits upright a little too quickly and some water sloshes out onto the tile floor. “Oh, dammit,” she mutters and works to stand. She thinks she hears something like _I’m coming in,_ but she can’t be for sure. 

Her legs feel like wet noodles and then two things happen simultaneously: Pamela opens the door and Harley’s legs give out. She’s fully expecting to split her head open on the side of the tub and is chocked with panic as she sees Pamela’s foot lose purchase in the puddle of water on the floor. 

They’re both going down so Harley is shocked when a strong arm wraps around her torso and she’s hovering inches away from Pamela’s face, breathing erratically. 

And to be fair, Pamela’s doing the same, eyes filled with waning adrenaline as she grips Harley’s waist with one of her hands and holds them out of the water with her other arm rigid against both of their weight. After a few seconds, Harley’s mind fizzles out of the initial shock and bounds into another one. 

She’s still dripping with water in a lot of places but the wetness at her front has transferred to Pamela’s black silk pajamas that are pressed against Harley’s bare skin. Being the complete gentlewoman, Pamela’s gaze never strays from Harley’s face. Harley herself though, is not. She looks down between them at the planes of her own body, at the delicate curving of Pamela’s, of how they’re flush against one another (and how her own pale skin is betraying her).

“Are you alright?” Pamela murmurs and lifts them both to stand. She doesn’t extricate herself from around Harley just yet, eyes searching. 

“Yeah, sure thing. Just a little weak from everything still. Nothing a quick nap won’t fix up. I’ll be out of your hair by tomorrow mornin,” Harley tries for some positivity. 

It doesn’t quite reach her eyes because _god_ , does she really have to leave whatever is happening here and go back to reality? It sounds so much better to stay tucked inside this, this beautiful and sideways version of life, this other dimension where maybe everything is just _nice_. 

“Goodnight, Harley,” Pamela whispers.

 _Look at me, Red. Please, just look at me. I’m right here._ It’s all nonsensical and Harley should absolutely not be wishing for something she’d have no idea what to do with if she got it. The loss she feels is acute when Pamela’s hands slide from Harley’s waist and she disappears out the door. 

Harley stands bare, raw, and feeling utterly alone. 

///-///

Sleep is restless. 

She tosses one way, then another. Stares at the ceiling. Leaves her bed to look out the window and down at Gotham below, to the streets that are beginning to know her. To the town slowly becoming hers. 

None of it can eclipse what’s been on her mind since the club. The memory of it is a solar flare in her brain, blinding light and heat. Growling, she smacks a palm roughly against the window sill. 

She’s losing control. 

Her warehouse is a heaping pile of rubble and ash, but she can’t find it in herself to care much. Not when she’s saved Harley and touched Harley and…

None of this should even matter. A creature of instinct she is, but it’s never been this bad. Like that if she doesn’t allow herself to take, it will shred her apart from the inside. 

What’s even more confounding is that she barely even knows Harley. Moreover, what she actually does is enough of a reason for her to stay as far away from her as possible. But the Clown of Gotham has taken something from her and she desperately wants to rob him of the thing he loves the most. 

Somehow, Pamela knows that isn’t the woman in the other room. You don’t show the depth of your heart with the blade of a knife, the force and the power of that desire with a kiss from a fist. But Harley has written their story in ink on her flesh, has let him do the same with puckered scars that will never go away. 

There are so many things that need Pamela right now: her business that just took a massive hit, her philanthropic efforts that she’s kept close to her vest. How she’s trying to change the way of things a little bit outside of how Gotham usually operates. It’s the whole reason she’s got to dress to the nines and rub elbows with the opposite side of life tomorrow. Never can any of them know the darker side of her life, what she does inside of the long shadows that are on every block of this city. 

Nowhere in any of that does she have time for Harley Quinn. 

Yet here she stands, out of alignment and wobbling on her axis. Things are not just tilted but almost inverted, so skewed as to feel downright unrelenting. There’s a battered woman in the other room and Pamela wants nothing more than to tuck her under her arm and save her from everything. 

“I can’t do this,” Pamela tells herself. Can’t get involved, can’t wind up caring, can’t let herself get wrecked when she needs to stay put together. The meaning could be many things. 

Resolve isn’t something found easily. It’s obtained from being clawed at, scraped against, pulled apart and reassembled again. 

Pamela doesn’t find it in the dark hours, doesn’t find it as she pulls the flowing white blouse against her tired body, the sharply cut slacks onto her thighs. It doesn’t show up as she looks in the mirror to give herself a once over, to see if she’s ready to stand in front of an elitist crowd of self-righteous souls. 

Believe it or not, it rears its head, asking to be noticed, as she exits her bedroom and finds Harley sitting cross-legged on the couch with only the clothes on her back and a small bag of medical supplies to doctor the new scar working its way onto her creamy flesh. 

Adjusting her watch, Pamela eyes her. She looks small and lost, but Pamela is no beacon on a storming sea, no harbor on choppy water. Harley has chosen the life she leads and that is another type of resolve too, even if the poor thing’s face doesn’t look it now. 

Words are inadequate at the moment. Pamela has already said more to Harley than she feels like she’s spoken to anyone in years. None of the vocabulary swirling in her brain could express the twisting confusion in the organ she thought she’d stopped listening to long ago. 

Moving to the door, she takes one last look at Harley, her ruined face and hand, before she closes it behind her with absent sound. Pushing her sunglasses onto her eyes, her emotions turn to steel. 

No, she’s nobody’s savior. 


	4. How To Mend a Broken Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unwanted returns, chaos and destruction, and a kiss amidst it all

Harley has had a lot of low points in her life, has drug the fucking ground, but for some reason as she leaves Pamela’s house, (making sure to press the lock button on the keypad) she feels like she’s at rock bottom. 

She feels stupid clutching the gauze and medical tape under her arm, the one not attached to the side with the stab wound. She feels it more as she enters the street down below, the walk of shame so much worse than the ones she’s usually done. 

Because this time, the previous hours held no fun. Because this time, she’s going to have to pretend that the hole in her shoulder is a badge of honor given to her by someone who is just a little bit misguided instead of a lot of crazy. 

His goons don’t say shit when she practically falls out of the taxi. They don’t even turn an eye when she trudges up the stairs to her room. And why is that? Because this has all happened before and it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Because ghosts in this place are expected to haunt neverending, sliding into forever. 

Whether she sleeps for minutes, hours, or days she isn’t sure but suddenly she feels the faint tickle of something at her ear, and then her blood runs cold when the words are spoken. 

“Rise and shine, my blade’s edge.” Harley opens her eyes but wishes she were dead. “And there you are. I see your red-headed angel managed to lift you from pits of hell and return you to the land of the functioning.”

Harley rolls over to stare up at his pleased face. She’d love to rip out his jugular, cry and scream and tell him this isn’t how things are supposed to be. But telling someone they’ve created a hole in you isn’t really beneficial when they’d rather have had you dead. 

J rises from the bed and clasps his hands behind his back, a gesture meant to make him seem intimidating. Harley just sees him for the monster he is. 

“You squandered 48 hours and the result was a knife to your back. Tell me you’ve done better in the 72 since I saw you.” He turns and glares at her. “What can you tell me that will cripple Pamela Isley.”

Her throat threatens to close completely. Every part of her mind is screaming _no! don’t!_ but the alternative of not telling Mistah J something will surely be death this time and maybe if she can just stay alive long enough to figure something out, she can return the favor to Pam someday. 

“Tha gardens,” Harley manages to croak. “Aparo and Robinson Parks. She’s a benefactor for the recreational and beautification committee in the city. She had some fancy meetin’ over at Gotham U today for some sorta new project about a pond.”

When she manages to stop talking, she wishes she had a bullet from Mistah J’s gun to finish herself off. She’d seen the notification pop up from the redhead's datebook on that bougie fridge she had, a damn computer built into it. Harley is pretty sure she provided enough of a distraction for the woman to forget it would do so. 

Stalking over to her, he brings up his hand and she flinches, closing her eyes. He doesn’t slap her but does place an exaggerated pat across her cheek. “That’s real nice, Harley-girl,” Mistah J praises. 

“What are you gonna do?” she manages to ground out as he begins to walk away. 

“Why, destroy it all of course.” Like it’s the simplest thing in the world. He leaves with a spring in his step. 

“Goddamnit,” Harley feels hot tears spring at the corners of her eyes. 

She’s just given him a metaphorical and verbal bomb that will crumble yet another facet of Pamela Isley’s life. It won’t be too long before he uses literal ones again to take away something else she cares about. 

_But what if I can stop him? What if I can do something before it’s too late?_

She has no idea what he will choose to strike first. Not that Gotham has a lot in the way of places that lend a different aesthetic to the city other than its usual grit, but Harley can think of at least five potential striking points for Mistah J’s anger. 

This somehow feels like it’s her fault. Like it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t lost sight at the club, if she hadn’t let herself get caught up in the absolute torrent that wrecks her body from the inside out every time she is around Pamela Isley. The thought sends her hand up and under her shirt to trace against the sewed up wound. One that would have made her lose a lot of blood if not for the green-eyed wonder. 

The thought catapults her up, as quickly as she can move (which still isn’t very fast), and she groans as she takes off the top and shorts from Pamela’s house, the ones that still smell like her. She finds a bra that looks relatively clean, pulls it over her head as best she can, and works on some cleaner pieces. 

What she’s about to do is daunting in thought alone. She’s going to have to hit every one to find out which J is out to destroy. As she leaves her room, everything is fairly quiet. A sickening feeling takes hold: what if J is descending upon all the landmarks at once? 

If that’s true, there is no way she can save any of it. Disappointing Pam, admitting that this is all her fault, is almost too much to bear. But if she can save any of them, any of the things that Pamela holds dear, maybe it will be worth it in the end.

Grabbing a set of keys and clutching a hand against her chest, Harley barrels through the front doors of the funhouse and hopes she’s not too late. 

///-///

The committee had decided to visit a few of the beautification projects around the city. Pamela’s car follows along behind the senior members of the group on the way to Robinson Park. The traffic here is a little thicker than normal so they’re deposited a block away to continue walking toward the area. 

She pushes her sunglasses down from her sunlight haloed hair, squinting still behind the shade of them as she looks up at the hazy sun. The orb always looks this way when it’s out, the smog never letting it shine to its full potential. Pamela rolls her shoulders in chagrin just thinking about it. 

The day is nice enough, not too hot or stuffy. A cool breeze catches in the locks at her shoulders and feels good as it filters through the fabric of her white blouse. She stuffs her hands in the pockets of her slacks and makes her way to the other committee members and investors as they stand on the walkway near the street. 

“Just right down this way,” she points to her left and they begin to shuffle forward with her leading the way. “Spots such as these around the city are a necessity as they provide not only recreational areas for the citizens, but also provide natural habitats for plant and animal species to exist. More of our funding should be going into these places for the preservation of…”

And her words die in her throat, the clacking of her heels also withering in her ears. Several murmurs of shock and disgust pick up the slack from her own sound, but she only notices the white-hot rage flaring in her chest and gut.

Everywhere she looks is utter destruction. The metal benches are a mangle, wrought iron twisted and wooden planks snapped into shreds. The fountain near the center of the park has been reduced to stone rubble, no longer rising toward the sky. The pond area in which it flows has thick green murk frothing against its sides. Pamela leans down and gently lays a finger on top, pulling it back and using her hand to fan the scent of it outward. Some sort of chemical, an acid that’s turned the water stagnant. 

Standing, she makes her way along the gashed and jutting stones of the walkway. They’re torn from the ground and askew in the overturned grass, like wheels have chewed up the earth under them. 

On any surface that had been blank before, it’s now covered with graffiti. There is a rainbow of colors, sharp neons, and bright primaries. Coming to a particular section of the sidewalk, Pamela makes out the jagged lettering. She backs up to take in the full scope of what it says. 

_I run this town_

The big, bold letters taunt her, sears themselves into her retinas. Her hands form tight fists at her sides, her vision swims a little, and she isn’t sure how hard she can clench her jaw before she breaks it. Every broken and torn apart thing makes her ache, the pain sharp inside of her chest. As if somehow it’s connected to her, that she can feel the despondency of it down to her bones. 

At some point, the people around her disappear. Maybe they say goodbye, maybe they leave without a sound, maybe they think _oh, just another series of unfortunate events in Gotham-on to the next one._ But this isn’t demolish and devastate for the sake of it. This is a planned attack, a message addressed to her, and signed with a scrawl. 

Months it’s taken to plan the new projects for fixing up the city. Countless hours and days are worthless now. Pamela doesn’t even have to remove herself from where she stands to know that every single place on the list overseen by the committee will have much the same look. 

The city that she’d been working toward taming, the one she was trying to circumvent from the dregs is now circling the drain. Everything she’s worked for, everything she’s had to do to even have a _chance_ at tipping the scales is all for naught. She’s back to square one. 

Leaning down, she grabs at a tuft of grass knocked loose from the soil. She squeezes it beneath her hand as it curls into a fist, the bits falling out of it to the ground. Pamela seethes even more if that’s somehow possible. 

When she stands, she begins to furiously clip along at a brusque pace while pulling her phone out of her slacks and punching a number. 

“Pick me up, now,” she barks over the line and hangs up.

Just as she does so, a firm grip lands on her arm and she works against the spin to try and defend herself. She has let her anger blind her though, has let this catch her unaware, so there’s little she can do other than try to stay upright on her heels as she’s propelled backward and shoved up against a tree and out of sight. 

Fury forms on her face, swirls in a storm in her green eyes. Standing in front of her is none other than Harley fucking Quinn. 

///-///

“Hiya, Red,” Harley says, not being able to help the smile that tugs on her lips because she’s here, right in front of her again. 

The joy only lasts a few meager seconds though when she sees the look of downright bitterness etching Pam’s pretty face. The smiling thing was probably a bit overboard due to the circumstances, but Harley had been so glad to see her again that she couldn’t stop it from happening to her face. 

Something dark flashes across Pamela’s face, like a shadow being created from the light disappearing from her visage, and Harley is spun so fast she barely knows what’s happened.

Her legs dangle pathetically in the air as she kicks against the slashed bark of the trunk she’s being pushed up, a hand wrapped tightly around her throat. Tears are beginning to form in the corners of her eyes and her shoulder and lungs are on fire as she is begging for air that her body can’t take in from her larynx being crushed. 

“Why,” she breathes, it coming out a ragged statement instead of a question, and Harley can feel the words on her chin, the woman’s long and delicate fingers wrapping ever more. 

Harley supposes she should have had the foresight to see this, Pamela’s ability to summon some part of her that she probably uses every day to run her business. How else has she become the crime boss she has? Not from batting her eyelashes and asking sweetly. What sort of things has she had to destroy to get what she has?

“Pam, please,” Harley manages to gasp out. She’s given up kicking by this point. The hold on her neck is too strong to work her way out of. Peeling the woman’s fingers away from her neck also proved fruitless. 

“You told him where I was today, why I had the meeting,” and there is palpable anguish in her voice that breaks Harley’s heart. “I helped you and you fucking betrayed me.”

Some part of Harley wants to say _I don’t even know you_ even though a patched up knife wound would say otherwise. The other side wants to drop to her knees and latch on to Pamela’s feet and beg for forgiveness. 

“You did this,” Pamela says against her ear, having eased her down the trunk a little, feet almost touching the ground. 

Harley can stretch to drag a toe on the ground, barely but still a possibility. This whole exchange has lasted maybe fifteen to twenty seconds, but it feels like a lifetime stacking up and she knows she’s gonna pass out if she doesn’t do something quick. 

Later, she’ll blame the hair-brained idea on lack of oxygen or adrenaline or something the fuck else other than what it probably is because she’s going to die with Pamela’s hands around her neck if she doesn’t move. And even though it doesn’t seem like a half-bad way to go, she just survived a stabbing four days ago and going out now would sort of seem like a weak bitch move. 

She begs her body to cooperate, tries to bend and contort her screaming abs as she does a downward thrust with her toes, getting enough footing to propel herself forward and crush her lips against Pamela Isley.

Opening her eyes seems like a poor choice (one of many) so she doesn’t, instead screwing her eyes tight to avoid whatever is going on in front of her. 

If she were to open her baby blues, she’d see wide emerald ones too stunned to shut, would see the slight purse of the other woman’s lips as she worked to press against her even harder.

But Harley doesn’t. Instead, she deepens the kiss, moves her mouth in an edging glide filled with sorrow and desire and regret. Pamela isn’t responding, her body rigid, so Harley wraps an arm around her slender waist and pulls her into her body. 

So many sensations are hitting all at once: the obvious soft plumpness of Pamela’s lips, the wispy fabric of her white blouse and the pliant skin beneath it, that anything but cloying scent of jasmine once again sticking to the inside of Harley’s nose. 

It’s a small victory when her feet touch solid ground and the hand that had been wrapped around her throat eases off completely. Small only because Pamela backs away, burns her eyes into Harley’s which manage to flutter open for a split second. Then the big victory comes when she’s shoving Harley up against the tree trunk in a different kind of way. 

This time, Harley uses both of her hands—one to hold Pamela’s face and the other to wind in her hair. And _god_ , Pamela’s kissing back. 

Seemingly cognizant of needing to keep her hands away from the tender flesh of Harley’s shoulder, she holds onto Harley’s ribs with a slightly curved palm and her other soothing the flesh she’s surely formed bruising on at her neck. 

It’s heated and wet and Harley’s knees are so fucking weak because it’s never been like this with _anyone_ else, not in her entire life. When Pamela pulls back, Harley lets out a whimper, feeling smaller from the loss of the whirlwind they create together. 

In another placating gesture, she cups Pamela’s chin as the woman presses their foreheads together, their breaths mixing between them. Harley watches as her mouth slides down again and her body hitches as Pamela’s lips wisp over hers. 

“I don’t ever want to see you again,” she whispers and then jerks back quickly, leaving Harley stumbling forward. 

By the time she can gain her composure, there is nothing beautiful like Pamela in the park. Harley stands amid the destruction she inadvertently helped create. Somehow, it feels like there’s no coming back from this. 

She puts a hand up to her lips, touches them, and tries not to feel bereft. It doesn’t work at all. 


	5. Foolish Plans and Aching Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley feels remorse and tries to do something stupid, Pam decides to up her game while also enlisting the help of an old friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Thanks to all who take the time to comment/kudos. I really appreciate it!

Weeks pass. 

If she said she never thought about tender lips on hers, the desire and anguish behind them as she’d opened her own to kiss back, it would be a lie. 

It’s not something she’s had the experience of wallowing in often, if ever, in her life. She’s taken people into her bed, stripped her body of anything between them, but it was only for perfunctory reasons-to get off and take care of an urge. Not once has she let anyone strip her emotionally. 

So why does it feel strangely like that with Harley? 

She’s resisted, locked her own hand between her thighs as it wiggled its way down to betray her. But she hasn’t touched herself with Harley on the back of her mind. She hasn’t invited anyone between her legs since Harley first blipped on her radar, _no_ , crash landed into her life at the club. 

But everywhere Harley goes, there is chaos in her wake. Already, it’s affecting Pamela’s life. She’s lost a warehouse, had the parks and pathways she’d actually loved in this city torn away and left in shreds. Harley may not have done it explicitly, but her involvement with her dickheaded employer (and Pamela would venture an on and off lover) had ensured that Pamela was fallout. 

She’s had to figure out a way to recoup her losses, (gain control back of her rogue heart) so she’d made her lackeys set up a makeshift lab in order to throw herself back into her work. 

Cannabis had been more popular than ever and Pamela was having no problem getting her product out. If she was truly going to cripple that overwhelming piece of shit and bring his funhouse down to the ground though, she’d have to use her intellectual prowess to come up with something big. 

So she had. And it is fucking glorious. 

She’s spent the weeks since the Harley incident testing and working with the substance psilocybin. Known for being the chemical agent that induces powerful hallucinations, she’s had to work to get the right potency. 

Holding it between her thumb and forefinger now, she moves the clear capsule to the light. Both bright and muted earth colors, browns and greens, swirl together in an amalgam looking like nature in a suspended world: one that will take any user on a ride. 

Pamela has created it out of anger, had felt something resembling regret for a few moments at what she’s done (of what this could do), but then remembers this is the least of the problems considering what’s flooding the streets, of who’s running them. 

Taking off her glasses and stripping her lab coat, she pushes up her sleeves. Faint freckles line her skin and inside of the makeshift lab, the lights cast a greenish tint to her flesh. She deposits the capsule in a small box, places it inside of a locked container when she hears a voice behind her, sultry and smooth.

“Oh, darling. How do you manage to look drug boss chic and academia nerd all at the same time?”

Selina Kyle sits with her legs crossed atop the workspace Pamela just vacated. Her dark hair is close-cropped and her green eyes shine. Everywhere Pamela looks is tan skin and lithe muscles. Pamela hasn’t known one person to resist the charms of the woman—except for herself. 

The initial interest had been intrigue, not something tied to a baser urge. They’d forged a friendship despite Selina spending most of her nights wrapped around a fucking Bat. She’s never judged Pamela though, has always provided a level head and a weird devotion Pamela has rarely found in life. 

“What are you doing in town, Kitty? I thought you’d fucked off to god knows where. Jewels in London, gold in Egypt, fine champagne and clothes in Paris,” Pamela responds, walking back toward her and pulling her up from the table. They stand face to face with smiles. 

“No kiss hello? It has been a while,” Selina runs a sharp nail along the base of Pamela’s neck. 

“That’s never been our style,” Pamela tsks, the sound anything other than displeased and reflecting a bit of mirth. 

“I figured you needed a pick me up after the shitty few months you’ve had,” Selina says rather seriously, concern etching her exotic face. “What on earth did you do to piss off that joker?”

Pamela pulls away, bringing a hand to rub her forehead. “You wouldn’t understand, Selina.”

“Oh, shit, that serious huh? It’s about a girl, isn’t it? You fucked his girl and that made him come after you.”

“I didn’t fuck his girl,” Pamela growls but then has to turn away from Selina’s face because she’s still guilty in her own way. _Of so many things_...

“Right, because madmen like him take out their anger on others for absolutely _no_ reason,” Selina says with an eye roll. 

“Uh, yeah, because that’s his thing. Chaos and anarchy and destruction. He does whatever the fuck he wants and doesn’t care about the collateral damage,” Pamela sneers at just the thought of him—his smug face and his annoying laugh. She wants to end him completely. 

“Alright, you didn’t get the hook up. I must say, you’ve lost your edge a little bit, but these things can be expected with older age,” she says and then does a Cheshire grin when Pamela glares at her. “But I honestly can’t think of any other reason you’d throw yourself into this whole endeavor with such fervor.”

“You live in the gray area between the two opposing forces of this city. I’m trying to do the same. The whole area is dying, a cesspool of fester and decay. If I don’t do something about it, this Gotham all of you seem to love so much will be overtaken by the shadows. By men like Mistah J.”

She winces when she realizes what she’s let slip. _Shit_. Selina stalks up behind her and wraps an arm around Pamela's neck and shoulders, hums in her ear. 

“And like a flower emerging from the bloom, the truth comes out. You were trying to circumvent my focus. No one that I know calls that piece of shit that little diddy of a moniker except for…”

“Alright! I kissed her, okay?” Pamela spins to look at Selina whose eyebrow is reaching for the sky. “Or she kissed me. But it doesn’t matter. I told her I never wanted to see her face again.”

“She…” Selina plays coy.

“Don’t be daft. Anyone in this city who knows of him knows that her pom-pomed sneakers are always about five seconds behind,” Pamela rolls her eyes. Her friend’s eyes go wide and an all pearly whites smile beams. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Selina says in a tone that in no way belays that she thinks Pamela is kidding. “You’re talking about Harley Quinn.”

Pamela goes to put on her blazer again. She gives Selina a wry look. “Who is the bane of my existence right now.”

“So how’d you run into that one? I know the social circles in this town are small, but having playtime with the competition doesn’t seem like a smart move here,” Selina follows along as Pamela locks down the area. 

“She approached me, believe it or not. At first, I thought it was a ‘two ships passing in the night’ kind of thing. But then my warehouse erupts in flames and she’s lying on the ground outside of it with a stab wound to the shoulder, fractured cheekbone, and two broken fingers. The next thing I know, I’m having to perform a fucking procedure I had only heard about in med school,” Pamela pours out, practically verbally spewing what’s been leaden in her since this all has started. 

“Whoa, what? You don’t even like people and you went all Gregory House for this woman?” Selina gapes. 

Pamela frowns. “House cured off the wall medical issues but usually only after making them worse. And Jesus, that show went off the air ages ago.”

“I don’t watch a lot of television, darling.”

“Your frame of reference definitely shows that.”

“Now nah-ah. We are most definitely not going to skirt around the fact that you straight up saved her life when you’ve only touched plants for the last fifteen years. So you stitch up her wound and what, send her on her merry way?” Selina asks, eating the whole screwed up tale too quickly for Pamela’s liking. 

_Like dangling a ball of yarn in front of her_ , Pamela thinks. She’s in no hurry to admit the next part. 

“No,” she finally relents, leaning against the hallway wall of the warehouse and placing her hands on her hips. “I took her home with me.”

Selina shoves her forcefully, meant to be a playful gesture but a bit over-excited to come off that way. “You damn liar! You said you didn’t sleep with her.”

“She had a stab wound and broken fingers. How exactly was I supposed to fuck her?” 

“Or her fuck you,” Selina waggles her own digits crudely. “But stranger things have occurred, I’m sure. And look, I can’t help what happens to women when you turn those enchanting green eyes on them. It’s like you exude some type of pheromone that makes you a panty dropper,” Selina shrugs. 

“Oh? Then how are you immune?” Pamela challenges. 

Not that she’s exactly interested in Selina _that_ way. Just because she enjoys the company of both men and women doesn’t mean her attraction is to any and all. So maybe Pamela’s mind _has_ gone there before, but she’d stomped it out very quickly. Selina’s propensity for taking up with millionaire do-gooders all helped to kill that particular vibe. 

“Not that you aren’t the bee's knees, dear, but I think you’d find you couldn’t keep up,” Selina jests, her eyes examining her manicured nails. She stops and gives Pamela a smile that is full of self-satisfied delight. 

“You must be unfamiliar with those I’ve left writhing with need in my wake,” Pamela throws out offhandedly. 

“I’ll take your word for it but back to our bouncing bubble of sugary-energy. So you take her back to your place, save her life, and don’t tap that?”

“Again, knife to the back. And I just...let her stay a few days until she could get back on her feet. Which is where I think I fucked up.”

“Fucked up, not actually fu…”

“No! God, let it go,” Pamela cuts off, truly exasperated now.

Selina sobers a little bit yet still has a mischievous look about her. “Do tell, since I keep trying to turn this into a sex story and it is clearly not delivering.”

“Things seemed to be going well. She gained her strength, we got to talk a little bit over the food I’d made her.” Selina makes a noise and when Pamela throws her a severe look, she mimes zipping her mouth and throwing away the key. “Anyway, she went off to take a bath and then she slipped and I sort of caught her, not exactly Superman style but…”

Selina looks positively ready to burst, so Pamela decides to give in and let her talk. “Was she wearing only what the good Lord gave her?” 

Instead of answering, Pamela only feels the hotness prickle her cheeks. _Have that, Selina. Shit…_

“I was so flustered with actually having someone around…”

“...the naked part probably didn’t hurt either.”

“...that I mentioned my meeting with the beautification committee. The next thing I know, we’re all staring at Robinson Park in shambles,” Pamela feels the ache of it again. “That can’t be a coincidence. I know Harley had something to do with it.”

She passes over the bit about practically choking Harley out and the subsequent kiss afterward. The whole thing has been hard for her to come to terms with, much less repeat it, so she leaves it vague. 

“So, what if I go and take a peek at our cute little psycho? Make sure she’s behaving herself and not passing off any more inadvertent tips to her douche of a boyfriend,” Selina offers brightly. 

“I don’t think they’re together,” Pamela grumbles and then starts walking again. “Anyway, don’t you have better things to do than interfere with my ‘whole endeavor’ that is giving me headaches as we speak?”

“Someone has fucked with my dearest of hearts and I find that unacceptable. I want to help you. Let me do this,” Selina loops an arm around Pamela’s shoulders as they walk the rest of the way down the hall and open the heavy door to the outside. 

“Don’t engage with her,” Pamela warns, a sort of reluctant permission passing between them. 

“Whatever you say, boss,” Selina sways away. 

“And don’t hurt her,” she adds, feeling incredibly transparent after she’s said it. 

Of course, Selina fucking sees. She flutters her fingers in a wave and disappears as quickly as she materialized. 

///-///

There’s got to be something said about reverting back to your teenage years and turning inward on yourself. About maybe how it’s somewhat understandable when you’re young and dumb but completely pathetic when you’re thirty and wiser. 

Or something like that. 

Harley can’t help it though, the despondent feeling too powerful to ignore. She’s indulged herself in it for far longer than is healthy, her bed practically holding the indention of her body now and her life from the last few weeks scattered around the perimeter of her mattress. 

_Ya didn’t get dumped, Harley. Red just said she didn’t want ta see ya ever again_ , she thinks. 

Somehow, that feels just as bad. Because maybe she could have stopped everything that’s happened if she’d just used her noggin’ instead of being distracted by the wiggly line between being decent and being loyal, two things that couldn’t have been farther apart in this scenario. 

Mistah J getting what he wanted has never felt so hollow. There is no joy to be had in it this time, no adrenaline-filled elation on her part watching him marionette his way through Gotham causing havoc with a smile on his face. 

With each bomb he set off and every landmark he destroyed, Harley had felt it as soundly as a physical blow to her body. 

Red’s warehouse up in flames. _Thwack!_ Benches broken and twisted in bent agony. _Pow!_ Grass all asunder and trees carved into. _Crunch!_ Marble work and sidewalks bearing taunts and garish art. _Thwap!_ The look on Red’s face as she stared into Harley’s eyes like she had personally caused everything around them. _Crack!_

Harley brings an arm over her eyes and growls. Maybe she has caused all of this. How stupid had she been thinking a kiss could patch up what’s happened? Once again, she’d put her own wants ahead of what she should have been focused on, lost herself in the possibility of having Pam, and being able to alleviate some of the woman’s anger. 

None of that had worked, of course. They’d shared the kiss and while Harley had been saying _hello, I’m so sorry, please don’t be angry with me, I don’t want to live without feeling this again_ , Pamela had been saying _I can’t believe you did this, it’s your fault, get away from me forever._

Harley finds her hand absently tracing the thin scar on her shoulder. She’d had to yank the stitching out herself a week ago, wishing instead she could have gone to Pam’s and asked the woman to remove them with her gentle hands and kind eyes.

Well, sometimes gentle and kind. Harley had seen and felt nothing but rage in them that day in the park yet instead of feeling frightened, Harley had been more fearless than ever, even when the woman’s hands had been curling around her throat. 

_I deserved it_ , Harley thinks because she had, hadn’t she? If not for her squeaky mouth, the nice things the city used to have might still be such. Now, there are millions of dollars worth of property damage and months of building them up again, if ever. 

Harley bolts upright, fisting the comforter on her bed. “I’ve gotta do something.”

But what? It’s not like she can skim money offa Mistah J. She’s never seen a red cent of it in person anyway, her only access to whatever portion he has at his disposal sometimes showing up in her bank account —what she knows is chump change in comparison to what he must have stockpiled. 

Standing, she begins pacing and kicking the detritus by her bed along as she goes. On one arching swoop, a paper sticks to her foot, and when she tries to shake it off, it doesn’t move. She grabs it from atop her sneaker and is about to wad it in a ball when the words catch her eye: _Gotham Museum Hosts Precious Gem Exhibit_

Her tongue leaves her mouth to lick her lips and she’s death gripping the page as she barrels out of the door. “I’m gonna steal a fuckin’ diamond!” she exclaims to herself. 

Once outside the museum though, she is reminded how out of practice she is...and how hard it would be to palm a diamond in her shitty makeshift cast. 

Mistah J has never been small time as long as she’s known him, but she’s had to work her way up in his scheme. That used to include various degrees of thievery. These days though, she’s more of a tear shit up, break shit down kinda gal, and her snatch and grab skills are a bit rusty. 

Sitting on the hood of her car though and rubbing at the cast idly, none of that seems to matter as she cases the museum, watching people go in and out of the front doors. 

Her thoughts are disrupted when someone glides gracefully to sit beside her. Harley whirls on them with a fierce might, but her fist she makes with her good hand is stopped in its tracks effortlessly. 

A different kind of green stares at her curiously, almost begging for Harley to try something again. Just as she’s thinking about moving her foot that’s resting on the bumper and bringing a muscled leg into the lady’s head, she speaks and the idea fizzles at its inception.

“Don’t get too cagey now. I’d hate to cause a scene when we could just enjoy a nice chat,” the woman cautions. 

“I don’t even know you, lady,” Harley grouses and yanks her wrist out of the woman’s grasp. 

“Oh, goody. Are you going to treat me like you treat all the ladies with green eyes who you don’t exactly know?”’ her eyebrows waggle suggestively. 

Realization dawns on Harley’s face as she processes the words. Women with green eyes. Oh, could she be…?

“You’re talkin bout Red, aren’t cha?” Harley breathes out but when she sees the woman’s face, quickly amends the nickname. “Pamela, I mean.”

“Mmm, yes, this is about ‘Red’ I guess you could say.”

“And who might you be?” Harley asks warily. She rakes her eyes up and down the woman again, a haughty appraisal. She can’t help it though, something akin to jealousy springing tightly in her chest. 

“A concerned party. Let’s leave it at that. I just wanted to touch base and see what all the fuss was about. Figured I’d cross paths with the famous Harley Quinn.” Harley snorts at this but the woman continues. “And even though I’ve received explicit instructions to look and not touch, when I saw your face screwed up in thought, I figured I’d throw that directive by the wayside before your brain blew a gasket from effort.”

“Hey!” Harley yells in indignation. “I’m not thick in tha skull, even tho I might act like it. Believe it or not, I’ve got a fancy doctorate too. Looks like they’re not all that rare in this business.” She throws her shoulders back in pride. 

“Oh, which one might that be? The one where you push blow and black tar heroin into Gotham while Pam tries to look pretty on pot mountain? No one is really who they are in this town, sweet. We all have two faces, at least some other side to us.”

“And what’s yours look like?” Harley grounds out, dropping the jester act in favor of being thoroughly pissed off. 

“Normally those jewels you have your eye on would be coming home with me,” the woman shifts, crossing her legs and leaning back on the hood of the car. She works her neck back and forth as the sun beats down on her olive skin. She opens an eye with a squint. “But this is about my girl, Pamela.”

“Are you two fuckin?” Harley barks out the question, getting even madder at the way the woman laughs. 

“No, she’s not one I’ve ever run my claws down. Anyway, these days it seems like she prefers the more fairer option on the physical features wheel.”

Harley ducks her head to avoid the woman’s steady gaze and fiddles with the already fraying edges of her cast. “I don’t hide my emotions well. I’ve never been good at it, even when I was at Arkham. People knew I was falling for J, even when I didn’t. And yeah, we had a thing but for me, I always felt like being loyal was deeper than any sex thing.”

 _Shut it, Harleen_ , she thinks. She’s already said too much to random lady who just so happens to know Pamela too. Maybe though, that’s why she keeps talking. 

“Even now, though I feel something very strong with Red, I stayed on with J. Because loyalty means something,” Harley trails off, but then tacks on. “Mostly because I never had anyone be that way with me.”

“Oh, honey,” the words are sorrowful.

“I’ve messed up, haven’t I? Pam won’t even think about seeing me again, will she?”

“I’m probably not supposed to say this but…” the woman cocks her head to the side and looks thoughtful. Her eyes soften when she catches Harley’s. “I’m here at her behest. She’s angry and she’s hurt, but I get the very distinct vibe that maybe you mean a lot more to her than she’s letting on.”

Harley can’t help the smile that creeps onto her lips. “How can I fix it then?”

“Well, not by stealing a fucking diamond and getting sent to Blackgate or worse, Arkham.”

“Been there, done that,” Harley reminds and shrugs. 

“Listen to me,” firm hands rest on her shoulders, and Harley winces, sucking in a breath. The woman’s eyes go wide. “Oh, shit, right. Stab wound.” She removes them. “Give her time. Until then, sort your shit out and try to find a way to make a break from that ass clown.”

Harley watches her slide down from the hood to stand to her full height. She’s charming, to say the least. 

“Are you asking me to leave him for Pam?” Harley tries, not exactly sure what the endgame is supposed to be. 

“I’m asking you to think about it. Goodbye, Harley Quinn.”

Harley watches her hail and cab and climb in. When she shuts the door, the car pulls out into traffic and is swallowed up.

_I never even got her name._

Harley looks over to the museum, thinks back to the newspaper announcement stuck to her shoe. 

“Fuck,” she grumbles and holds her shoulder as she leans back against the windshield of the car. 

There might be a way to fix things, but the museum isn’t it. Harley wonders how she can feel both better and worse than when she first arrived. Whatever it takes though, she’s got to find a way back to Pam. 

///-///

“Trial 7, day 2. The time is 15:42. Subject is lucid and has his faculties about him. Please state your name and age for the record,” Pamela commands, holding her phone out so that the man may speak into it. 

“Uh, whaddaya want me to do, Miss Isley?” the man looks confused. 

_So much for having his faculties about him._

“For fuck’s sake, Walter. I’ve got to log the testing in this new drug I’ve developed,” Pamela sighs and turns off the voice recording on her phone. She watches as he fidgets on the stool. “If you’re uncomfortable with this, say the word. I may be ruthless in some aspects of this profession, but I refuse to subject you to this without your consent.”

“What am I sposed to expect from this?” he looks slightly worried. 

He’s probably in his mid-forties, a little older than Pamela. His hair is closely cropped and his body build looks about like every other man she employs, stocky and menacing. His demeanor is usually otherwise, quiet and agreeable, but not afraid to use his strength when she bids it.

Pamela is pretty sure he was a bodybuilder in another life or some sort of sports star before he started juicing and never looked back. An injury all but did him in and he turned to the streets to keep him thrumming and his veins full. Now, she uses him for bodyguard detail most of the time since his face and posture send the clear message _do not fuck with me._

“The effects are not unlike those caused by the hallucinogens in some species of agaricus bisporus,” Pamela tries to explain but stops when she sees his blank look at her scientific jargon. She rubs at her temple with her hand. “‘Shrooms’ as the kids on the street call them.”

While her hired help is good for muscle and some varying degree of loyalty, brains tend to lack. Walter is a good guy, dependable and strong, but sometimes slow on the uptake. 

“Some varying degrees of visions will occur. I’m hoping for the additional bonus of being able to control the user with a specific set of commands that are a triggered effect from the compounds used in the capsule.”

“Okay, Miss Isley,” he nods. “Not like I’m a stranger to the hard stuff. The only difference is now, you got me working with it instead of laying on the streets doin’ it.”

An irony, for sure—taking a junkie off of the street and turning him into a reformed and recovering addict. Or maybe a slightly less destructive one. She doesn’t know because even her own shit doesn’t work all that well on her, so she leaves it to others to keep her sitting upon millions. 

“You don’t have to do this,” she reminds him, holding the capsule out in her palm, like Morpheus extending a choice that’s going to alter a life no matter what happens. 

Walter takes the pill, puts it into his mouth, throws his head back, and swallows dry. “I got you, Miss Isley.” 

Weirdly, her chilly heart warms at the display. In this place, in this life, it’s about as much as she gets. “You should be feeling the effects in…” she looks up from her watch to notice that Walter’s eyes have dilated, a euphoric look overtaking his face. She shrugs. “Now, I guess.”

Normally, psilocybin takes twenty to thirty minutes to hit a user’s system due to the body having to break the substance down into another chemical, psilocin, which directly impacts the serotonin receptors in the brain. That delayed outcome wasn’t adequate in providing Pamela with her desired return. 

Simply put, the high needed to be immediate, especially if she’s going to use this in the manner she intends. While Walter and her other test subjects have been willing, the others won’t be. 

Sure, without the commands, what she's got is a fast-acting trip for anyone who ingests the pill. If she’s ever to gain the upper hand with Gotham’s most unrefined though, she’s got to play this perfectly. 

Picking off _his_ help and swinging them to her control seems like a good place to start. In the end, she hopes to stare him down with an army of his own men behind her as she comes to give him his overdue end. 

_Harley_. 

It’s like a heartbeat somewhere at the back of her mind, a pulsing thought that wants to be noticed begs Pamela to take the time to consider. 

Nothing would be more fitting than to have his beautiful girl standing by Pamela’s side as she stands in front of him ready to rip his life away. But she can’t bring herself to want that, to want to control Harley. She wants the woman to choose Pamela as an ally for herself. 

_Which she never will_ , Pamela thinks and sighs. 

“Alright, Walter. I’m going to need you to listen carefully,” Pamela removes her glasses and dips her voice an octave. “I need you to withdraw the weapon in your shoulder holster and point it on the target at the opposite wall. 

His eyes are black pools as he does what he’s told. The hand wrapped around the trigger doesn’t even shake, a steeled intensity radiating off his massive forearm. She shouldn’t feel this unhinged inside, but the anger emanates from deep inside of her as she remembers the ruined park. The destroyed everything else. 

“Kill target. Engage.” 

She watches as holes burst into the black silhouetted body, the puckered paper fanning out all over the chest portion of the poster. Glancing into Walter’s eyes, she sees them still blown wide, wonders where he is lost inside of his own mind. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole waiting to hit the ground and never reaching it. 

“Would you tear this city down with your bare hands for me?” she asks quietly, selfishly. Some part of her longs to make something hurt as bad as she has. 

“Yes, Miss,” he answers rotely, robotically. 

She runs a hand along his barrel of a chest, feels the rock of his deltoid, the angular curve of his pectoral. Her eyes find his, burning green, ablaze like the inside of her chest. 

“Would you kill for me?” she ventures more seriously. He answers without a moment's pause. 

“Say the word,” he replies. 

“Would you die for me?” Pamela whispers because with what she’s got planned, no one escapes this without blood on their hands. 

The question that she’s posed, this very one, has been met with hesitation six times. It's a natural instinct, to preserve oneself at all costs. This is something that she understands as fact. But in order for all of this to work, she’s had to remove that factor, to take away the inhibition or else there’s no hope of swaying anyone to her side.

She watches as he points the gun to his own head. With a quick hand, she halts his movements. “Disengage.” She breathes out as he moves the weapon down to his side.

Pamela straightens and walks to her phone again. Bringing it closer to her lips, she speaks into it. “Test 7 is categorized as a success. My hope is that the altered chemical profile will provide longevity in the effects unless otherwise administered the antidote. 

Production for the amended street version will begin concurrently with organized strikes to Gotham’s joke of a drug lord in attempts to pick off his employees one by one.”

But what’s a drug without a name? Uppers, molly, crystal, blow, yellow jackets, smack. Each category has it’s go-to. So what could this be? 

Mind control seems a tad obvious, essentially like announcing a surprise before it happens. She twirls another capsule between her fingers. The glide of it halts when an idea blossoms. 

_Thank you, Selina_ , Pamela thinks. 

“Pheromone,” she smiles. 

She hopes Gotham likes the way it stands now. Because she’s about to bring it to its fucking knees. 


	6. Freedom Ain't Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confessions, dark alley promises, desire boiling over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Chapters will be uploaded a bit more than once a week now. My free time is taking a serious hit in a couple of weeks and I want to get this story completed. I also have some writings in the works for these two.  
> **Thank you again for the comments and kudos. They mean the world to me! Especially since I am still learning to play around with the dynamic of these two.  
> ***NOTE: This chapter is where the story officially earns its 'M' rating.

She’s riding a personal high when she walks through the door to her building. The city glow casts light all over the space so she doesn’t even flick on a light as she shuts the front door behind her and locks it. 

Adrenaline is making her jittery, alive but on edge, so she makes a stupid decision in her mind. Retrieving her phone from her pocket, Pamela looks for the contact number and punches it with her thumb. After four rings, she hears the call connect. 

“Why don’t I hear any loud music in the background over there? You’re usually ankle-deep in a fine scotch right about now,” Selina hums. 

It reminds Pamela it’s been a  _ long fucking time _ , so it shoots straight to her groin in an unkind way. “And do you ever speak in a tone that doesn’t resemble a bedroom voice?” 

“Now what would be the point of doing that?” she practically chortles and Pamela has to curl her hand in a fist against the granite counter of her kitchen bar. 

She’s breathing erratically now, too wound up for any damn good. Her body is flushed and the room feels unbearably hot. It’s hard to remember that this is Selina and they aren’t really like this, more just casual barbs and banter that amount to a hill of beans. Tonight though? Tonight Pamela could let her be something. 

She works to pop open the top two buttons on her blouse, opening the sides a little to hopefully let in some cool air. “I think I’ve figured out how to get my life back on track and not spinning in this fucking spiral it’s been doing.”

“If that involves inviting me over to ravage you, then I hate to disappoint, but I will not be arriving on your doorstep,” Selina says, the tone apologetic. 

“That wasn’t why I called actually,” Pamela frowns, a little upset by the rebuff. But she’s on edge, so she decides to press it. “Not even if I made it worth your while?”

“Must we do this dance? You’re a vision, truly, but you and I are like oil and water. We know we do well to stand side by side but we could never come together and make it work, sexually speaking.” Selina pauses, listens. “Dear god, Pam. How long has it been?”

“I don’t know,” Pamela answers flippantly. She knows exactly how long it’s been.  _ Since before the club.  _ She doesn’t say that. “A few months maybe?”

“Pam, specifically—how long are we talking about?” It comes out slow and measured. There’s a faint hint of disbelief too.

“Okay, fine!” God, this is embarrassing. Pamela mutters the next part under her breath. “Twelve weeks.”

“Three fucking months!? Have you joined the nunnery? It must be a literal desert down there. Have you completely dried up? Please tell me you’re taking care of yourself. I know you don’t do well with droughts. For the love of all that is good, give Miss Kitty some attention.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Says the woman who phoned me for a booty call. It’s been so long, your brain is rattled. What’s got you so distracted that you can’t even give yourself some loving?”

Pamela sighs and tries to ignore the dull throb lower. “Ever since the park…”  _ yeah, better to start there _ . “...I’ve been furious. Astoundingly so. But I’ve wanted to debilitate  _ him _ , in every way I can imagine. I want to ruin his business and ruin everything he holds close and ruin what every single person in this forsaken town thinks of him.”

“Sounds a tad vindictive of you. Didn’t think that was your brand.”

“I don’t know who I am anymore. I mean, does this even remotely resemble who I was before? I was collected, put together. These idiots were beneath me, a trivial thing to deal with only if they came into conflict with the pursuit of my own endeavors. 

“But I’m seeing things and doing things I’ve never imagined I would. Like maybe I’ve been turning a blind eye to everything, but now I’ve got them wide open and I see everything for what it is. And I want to change it.”

“And this change you speak of,” Selina begins. “What might it entail and who might it affect? At what lengths are you willing to go to to get it?”

“You sound like him, you know. Your dark knight,” Pamela rolls her eyes. Well, the edge is off now. Nothing like bringing up Batman to sober oneself. 

“Just because he and I tussle in the sheets now and again doesn’t mean I’m reformed, dear. You have your vices, I have mine. Yours just happen to fuck people up while mine includes getting fu—-“

“What if I told you I had a plan, a plan to fix all of this and alter Gotham forever?” Pamela cuts her off. 

“I’d say I was concerned. The last person I advised caution to and stopped from going balls to the wall showed some restraint, big fucking surprise, so I’d say my two cents are actually worth their weight in gold. Hell, give me a Ph.D. too.”

“Bruce Wayne doesn’t count if you persuaded him while you were riding him,” Pamela jabs.

“I’m choosing to float over that little comment like a gymnast doing a cartwheel,” Selina pointedly throws back and Pamela stills. 

How have they gone from sex to drugs to...this? Pamela already knows where this is going and even though she’d asked Selina to find the woman in discussion, she’s not been too keen for the report back. Which is why, she assumes, there hasn’t been one. 

“Harley.”

“She looked fucking miserable, Pam. You know me, empathy really isn’t my strong suit, but I almost felt bad for the girl. Sitting on top of that car, big dreams in her eyes, planning a stupid gem heist so she could turn around and sell the damn thing to rebuild one of your precious parks.”

_ No _ , goddamn it. Her heart lurches in her chest and this is not at all the feeling she wanted to indulge in tonight. But in her mind, a vision of Harley swims. 

She imagines her looking like she did that night at the club, a streak of red everywhere. A flash and she’s battered and bare underneath Pam’s fingertips. A fast forward and she’s standing in front of her in tiny red and black shorts snug on her hips, matching halter top and jacket pressing into Pamela as their lips meet in a crazed kiss. 

“I’m sure she was just being reckless. It seems like that’s her thing if the daily papers are a reflection of that.”

“Honey,” Selina’s voice goes soft and Pamela braces herself against what’s coming. “What is it with this woman? You’ve never been like this as long as I’ve known you. Why  _ this _ one?”

There’s honesty that laps at the surface of her body and threatens to spill over. Pamela finds herself wanting to tell Selina everything, even if she can’t understand it fully inside of herself yet. Even if it’s completely irrational that her feelings can go to the depths they have after seeing someone all of two times. 

But oh, what those two times had been. How Harley had efficiently managed to ingrain herself into every thought, every action. Would Pamela even be pushing this hard if she weren’t in some way trying to free Harley from that joke of a human? 

Pamela has to stop herself again: is this for selfish reasons or is this for the good of Gotham? 

_ Why can’t it be both? _ she thinks and then opens her mouth, letting what’s built up flow out of the dam. “It’s confusing and frustrating and it makes me feel weak.”

Well, okay. Pamela listens as she hears Selina inhale a little. “Needing people isn’t weak, Pam.”

“But you said it yourself, why her? There’s a whole fucking planet of people. Why did she have to walk up to me and tip my world on its end? I shouldn’t want her, Selina, not after everything that’s happened.”

_ But I want to save her. I want to show her she doesn’t have to walk around in the world different shades of black and blue. _

“God, I can’t believe I’m about to say this but—sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants,” Selina tells her.

“That’s incredibly sappy of you,” Pamela laughs and realizes there are tears forming in her eyes. Oh, what the fuck. “Now it’s my turn to not believe what’s about to come out of my mouth but...” she hesitates. Does she really want to say what comes next? “I need a favor.”

“You’re stacking up a considerable amount of those,” Selina goads a little but Pamela knows the woman is going to do whatever she asks.

“Consider this your last one for me. The most important one,” Pamela tells her.

“Now you’re scaring me. You’re not taking the fatalistic approach to all this, are you?”

“No, just the realistic one.” Pamela sighs heavily. She’s been thinking about this moment on end. “I need a meeting.”

///-///

The day is overcast when she leaves the interior of the funhouse. It’s taken a while for the goons to turn their watchful eyes off of her. Or her from them. Which is what tends to happen when someone stabs you, she supposes. 

But it is daunting always having to look behind her back, to not trust the shadows that follow along behind her.  _ Even my own _ , she thinks. For weeks on end, she’s felt as if she’s betrayed herself too. With every footfall though, every step she takes away from the place that’s made her who she is, she might be a step closer to redemption.

Her heart is an almost jaunty thing inside her chest as her feet hit the blacktop at a steady clip. Inside of her red and black gloves, her fingers flex and go slack sporadically. How easy it would be to take out some of these nerves with a good smashin’ session, some honest to goodness bat or mallet therapy. 

Harley has a meeting though, one she never thought she would have ever again. Because today? Today she’s seeing Red. 

After wallowing and dragging and berating herself as she tumbled down the well of self-loathing, she’s going to come face to face with the only person who’s managed to steal her breath away since she’s become Harley Quinn. 

J did, back in the before. That’s the mistake that people make. But once she was trimmed out of her Harleen shell to live inside of this one, she’s not felt the same depth of emotion she once did. Because there is no romanticizing their life together, it being one violent smear of broken things that have come together to make a pile. A mountain that they’ve stood upon but one made out of the fragments of destruction. 

_ Basically, a pillar of death and shit _ , Harley thinks. It’s hard not to feel like the soles of her sneakers are headed toward something better, even if Pam is still pissed. 

The feline-like goddess from the other day gave Harley the spot, a place that should have not surprised her in the least. It’s the only place that the shadows seem to eat themselves.

Harley glances up at the rickety ladders that have rusted from acid rain, the same kind that’s probably falling on her head as she walks along. She throws her signature jacket over her head, the leather making the droplets patter audibly. 

There’s trash covering the pathway down the alley, her shoes scraping through muck that’s more liquid than solid now. Down here, the light dies so she stalks along in relative darkness. The walls are akin to Harley’s own skin, some things that matter and some that don’t written along its surface. 

Harley fits in well here, where nothing nice exists. The stealthy figure approaching though, the very movement of it, is in stark contrast to the surroundings. Beneath the cowl, that crimson hair falls out. Like it can’t be contained because it’s essence is too beautiful to be tamed by dark things. 

If Harley thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest before, it all but threatens to overwork itself and stall out. Especially so when the woman lifts her head and Harley can finally see her jade eyes. They almost glow in the faint alley light and that breath of Harley’s that always gets stolen? It’s nowhere to be found. 

They say nothing between them for expanding moments, the only sound the creaks and groans of the alley, a sad dirge that would probably be a fitting official anthem for Gotham whole. 

“God, Red. You’re so beautiful,” Harley whispers and breaks the stalemate of no voices. Pamela’s face registers the remark and then goes slack.

“Whatever you think I’m here for, it’s not what you want,” Pamela huffs in clear frustration. 

“And what is it you think I want?” Harley has the balls to ask, as if this woman didn’t wrap her gorgeous hands around Harley’s pale throat and squeeze the life from her the last time they spoke. She takes a step closer and Pamela looks threatening from under her hooded coat. 

“I’m here to warn you,” she says, holding up a hand to stop Harley’s progress. “What I’ve got planned, I...you need to know what’s coming. What I’m going to bring to your doorstep.”

Harley has some inkling. If it has anything to do with the new drug she’s been hearing about being pushed onto the streets, something even more dangerous is likely on the horizon. Pamela is the angel of reckoning heralding it in. 

“The parks are lookin’ real nice again. I figured it would take some time for them ta ever get back to the way they were but somehow, they’re even better. You musta had something to do with that,” Harley changes the subject a little. 

Pamela smiles faintly at their mention. “Yeah, and a fancy new warehouse to boot. Much more state of the art. Even has a built-in lab. A much-needed addition, since business is booming these days.”

She’s alluding, back to the reason she’s probably agreed for the face to face in the first place. “Your ‘pheromone’ you mean? Mistah J has been wicked pissed since you put that shit on the streets.” 

It’s not that Harley is mad. In fact, far from it. Some part of her almost feels a sense of pride that Pam’s managed to take J down a peg. 

But Harley is worried too. He’s not someone to be trifled with if the fucked up parks and Pam’s destroyed warehouse are any indications. Hell, she’s got a knife scar forming across a swath of her shoulder and chest that proves that point vividly. Whatever Pam’s planning, Harley doesn’t want her mixed up in it. 

She throws back her hood now, green eyes glaring and nostrils flaring. After a beat, she closes them and rolls her shoulders as if shaking it off. “That ‘shit’ was a necessary piece to end this once and for all.”

Harley reaches out, touches her then, cups her cheek as the rain begins to permeate their clothes. Her palm glides along Pam’s skin, skating across the flesh of her face. “Red, don’t do this. Please,” she begs. “You told me that I could only save myself if I walked away. But maybe I can save us both. Just…”

Just what? She doesn’t have an end to her sentence but knows that what’s going to happen isn’t it. 

“You don’t get to ask that of me,” Pamela says, anguish bending her words. “I can’t trust you. Not after my apartment, when you were there.”

“I know I don’t have a solution. Not even close. But if you feel this, this thing between us, then stop what you’re doing and let’s figure us out,” Harley continues. “It’s like maybe my eyes ain’t been open the whole time or I’ve just been starin’ out and takin’ life as it is. But they’re looking now, Red. They’re open wide and seeing you. You did that. I ain’t going back no more, not if you’re standing here with me.”

Pamela’s mouth drops open and Harley watches her struggle for her own breath. When the woman before her says nothing though, that creeping ache returns. Pamela is already hard enough to read and as much as she wishes that she were an open book, Harley can’t quite find a way to reach wherever she’s at. She drops her hand back down to her side. 

“You belong to someone else.”

Harley jerks her head up at the words. Now Pamela’s eyes lock, holding Harley in place once again. “Nah, it ain’t like that. I swear it. I’m just another henchman or hench lady. Nothin’ else.”

Pamela shrugs. “Isn’t that the same thing? As long as you’re under his thumb, you’ll never be free.”

Is she a caged bird? One with clipped wings? If so, why does she feel like she can fly every damn time she and Pam are together? Harley lets out a sigh and starts to run a hand through her soaked hair to rake it out of the way when she’s grabbed by the sides of her jacket and shoved into the wall. 

That’s how their second kiss occurs. 

Underneath a weeping sky, amongst the grit and dark seediness of Gotham, where damaged things go to die, Harley and Pamela let tinder catch. They set one another ablaze. 

Harley can’t grapple with everything at once, her mind flitting with the speed of a hummingbird. That’s because there’s the rhythmic thump of Pamela’s heart under her fingertips, the way the strands of her hair feel curling around her digits on the other hand. 

Pamela’s hands have their own places they seek, the indentation of Harley’s ribs and the sloping expanse of her pale neck, her slender fingers brushing over it like they’re trying to erase the marks that have already long faded. 

In an alley made for monsters and shadows and fear, where laws cease to be order, Harley pushes the boundaries of what’s right, so caught up in searing need that nothing else seems to matter. When she speaks, it’s her voice that says this. “Red, I need...please.”

Some things are better left unsaid. 

Whatever bubble they’ve been existing in for the last few blissful moments pops, fizzling away to vapor. Pamela stills her body’s work on Harley’s, turns her eyes downward, and lets the rain wash her away. 

“What have you done to me?” she says quietly. Harley finds it hard to admit the truth. That the undoing that’s occurred isn’t just one-sided. 

“Give me time,” Harley says quickly, excitedly. 

“What?” The other woman looks confused and rightfully so. She pulls her jacket tighter around her, like it isn’t already pointless anyway. 

Harley is a flurry then, all spinning thoughts and with enough energy to power a plant, like epinephrine shot into the chest. “Whatever ya got planned, whatever you’re gonna do…” she splutters a bit, out of breath. “I’m done, Red. I’ve been done since I got a knife crammed into my back. Say the word, and I’m yours.”

It’s a lofty promise made on flimsy ground. Harley knows this but says it anyway, feels it so strongly in her heart that it almost pales in comparison to what some version of her felt before.

This doesn’t feel like a descent into the darkness of Harley anymore but stepping back into the light of Harleen. It’s strong and good and no matter what may happen, it makes Harley feel like steel because Pamela smiles, honest to god lets it turn up her features like a fuckin’ ray of sun. 

“I’d never claim you, Harley. But I can’t say that I haven’t thought about what it might be like to have you at my side,” Pamela says with that radiant grin still on her face. She reaches out a hand to touch Harley’s shoulder. “As my  _ equal _ . Nothing else.”

Shoulder be damned, associations all but thrown out the window, she launches herself into the red head’s arms and swirls her around in a dance in the rain, her lips finding her again as she seals them together. 

The promises come again, maybe even improbable and unattainable ones, but Harley believes them in her heart and that’s gotta count for something. “Just give me time. I’ve wanted out for so fuckin’ long. I’ll find you again, I swear to it.”

“You know this is crazy,” Pamela half stammers in disbelief, half in radiating joy. 

“Baby, I’m good at crazy,” Harley whispers against her lips one last time before she pulls away. 

It’s hard to let go of Pamela’s hand and trudge back into the waning hours but she does. Not before she turns back to see the smirk upon Pamela’s lips causing her to bite her own as she waves a small, sheltered goodbye. 

When she exits Crime Alley, there are pure clouds on her feet. 

///-///

What neither of them could ever know about the other is that they arrive at the respective homes in a similar state. 

Harley’s body feels all abuzz, thrumming with rogue beats that almost feel like second nature since a certain gorgeous redhead walked into her life. 

Concurrently, Pamela closes her eyes and loses herself in visions of lying underneath blonde waves, letting herself drown. 

In a funhouse as dusk settles on the broken down cityscape of Gotham, a door slams, and a bolted lock is thrown. Not really to keep the world out, but to keep this wired feeling in. Sneakers get toed off and flung with zero thought. Shorts are shed, halter unflinching and falling to the floor. 

The same careless is not performed at the apartment covered in vines and thorns. With each movement, Pamela knows what’s she staggering toward. She’s been on the brink of it when she’d listened to Selina purring in her ear. With the patience of a saint, she lets shaky fingers untuck her silken blouse, sweating fingers slowly free the clasp of her slacks. 

While one room is bathed in bright lights, the other lets the city illuminate the crevices and corners. One body unabashedly lays out free and the other curls in on itself against the back of a linen couch. 

Harley brings a hand against herself, brazen and bare, lets her thighs envelop it as she lets her eyes slip shut with jungle eyes in her mind and firelight hair curling around her heart. 

Pamela reaches down, slipping past the barriers she’s piled onto her body to keep herself from being laid open and visible. When the first glide of her fingers hits the center of her agonizing ache, she gasps at the intensity of it. It doesn’t take long for her to imagine her own hand being one of paler flesh trailing up that swims into a sea of blue. 

They’re on opposite sides of the line in the sand but as the night rises and the clouds move away, the divide doesn’t seem much like a chasm anymore. Like maybe instead of being two worlds apart, they’re really standing toe to toe. 

So they move against themselves and think the entire time of the other. Of how two completely different hearts can find tandem with one another. How maybe one can be saved by simply letting go. 

Harley wraps the fingers of the once idle fist (the still healing one) in the sheets as she feels the proof of her need, the staggering slickness of it making her hand feel as if it’s sliding on ice. The precipe to which she is barreling toward is frightening as well because words punctuate the origin of thoughts:  _ Never _ this good and  _ insanely _ strong and  _ already _ happening. 

It’s hard to back away when it feels the way it does. Some sort of resolve hits her then, settles tightly in her mind and between her thighs. She’ll give herself this and ride on the high of it really being because of  _ her _ all along. When she comes, she sees nothing but red. 

Across the way, Pamela clutches roughly at the furniture to keep herself upright. When she enters herself, it’s reserved and luxuriating. This is the touch she’s been denying herself since that night in the club, saving it for the chaotic little storm that now has a name.

Tonight though, as she takes it up as her own duty to pleasure herself, somehow it doesn’t feel like treachery against not waiting for the actual thing. Because her orgasm absolutely belongs to Harley Quinn, her lips hanging open the moment it shudders her body to say as much. 

The seconds after don’t exactly feel like standing on the shore of wreckage. 

Harley lays with a hand against herself, giving herself the time she didn’t during the act of it to hold onto the fleeting curl of the desire as it recedes. To try to hold onto the idea of Pam for a bit longer simply because she doesn’t want to let go. 

When Pamela gains her senses, it’s like waking from a coma. It’s hard to remember what she’s done even though there was a meticulousness to it. She gingerly withdraws her now cramping digits, uses the other hand once locked onto the couch to pull back the fabric of her clothing in order to avoid making another mess as her pointer and middle finger hit the air. 

Blue eyes trace across the cracks on the ceiling while green stare down at her own state of disarray. One sits up on a lumpy bed, small but pert breasts pebbling and goose flesh pricking along skin, a stickiness beginning to dry between thighs. The other tries to ignore the hedonistic glide of the remnants of want at the apex of her legs, making her way to the sanctuary of her room finally. 

The cleanup leaves their lips in a constant state of upturned magic, of mad but hopeful dreams to one day experience the wonder of the peak and then falling down from it with one another. 

Within the confines of their own beds, tangled in a thin sheet and thick duvet respectively, each staggers into slumber as the last thoughts on one another’s minds. 

When the moon hits its highest point, Gotham, if only for the night, feels like a place where maybe, just maybe, they could have one another. Where they could take on the world, magnificently, together.


	7. Ambush in the Streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley tries to save the day but Pam ends up having to do it instead

The first thing she thinks of when the sunlight hits Harley’s face is Pam. She smiles and curls up in the thin sheet before stretching widely, body still bare and the muscles flexing into waking. 

_ Happy Emancipation Day _ , Harley says silently to herself. Hopefully by the day’s end, she’ll once again be in warmth and goodness and contentment. For the first time since she walked in Arkham as a doctor and not a patient, she’s going to do something for herself. She’s going to do what she wants. And what she wants is waiting for her on the other side of town.

She chooses a comfortable pair of cutoff shorts, the product of so many washes they’re completely faded. Her mood is feeling lighter than it has in ages, so she decides to deviate from her usual look, pulling on a pink crushed velvet crop top and a loose-fitting white shirt over that, leaving it hanging a bit off of her shoulders. 

Running a brush through her hair quickly, Harley decides on an uncharacteristic ponytail, bringing the red and blue tips together. 

There’s not much in the way of personal effects that she owns. A ragtag bit of clothing, a few decent pieces of jewelry, some makeup. Nothing that really means anything, nothing irreplaceable. Still, a slight twinge pegs her in the chest as she threads her arms through the straps of her backpack, her entire life boiled down to the contents that’s now riding behind her. 

There’s a commotion in the hallway as she leaves her room and  _ shit _ , she knows she needs to not get drawn up into whatever the fuck is happening. The bent, messed up part of herself that thrives on chaos can’t let it go though, so she follows the noise down to Mistah J’s,  _ no...just J’s _ room. 

Two of his knuckleheads are practically pulsing with static energy and Harley glances back and forth between them as she approaches. 

“Oh, look, Phil. Miss Goody Two Shoes decides to wake up and join the party,” one of them leers at her. 

“Saw you had a late night, Quinn. Basically knocked the front door off the hinges and ran to your room for the rest of the night,” number two eyes her watchfully. 

She tries not to let the blush get too far upon her pale skin, instead thinking how lucky these two morons are that they weren’t the ones that dug an 8-inch knife blade into her back and shoulder. If so, they’d be down a mouthful of teeth. And probably a few buckets of blood. Oh, who is she kidding? She’d have probably killed them by now. 

“What the fuck is with all the noise?” Harley gives them both a sardonic look. She waves to the door where J conducts all of his business. Since she hasn’t been summoned, she assumes it doesn’t include her. 

The doors are thrown open then, J’s oily look falling on Harley and his two goons. A sinister grin works its way onto his face and he clasps his hands in front of him before grabbing her roughly by her shoulder and dragging her into the room. The doors slam behind her and she feels unsure of what to do.

She’d planned to tell him she was done, so over all of this that she was leaving and not coming back. But now that he’s got his arm around her and pressing bony fingers into her still tender injury, it’s hard to get the words out. 

“Harley-girl, do I have something big brewing,” J closes his eyes and loses himself in it. Maybe a dream but more likely some nightmare. 

“Oh, yeah?” Harley tries to sound upbeat, interested. All the usual stuff she would have felt before Pam. Now, she just wants to get as far away as she can. 

J lets go of her finally and makes his way to his desk, plopping in his chair and propping his legs onto its surface. He drums his fingers atop it and fixes her with a pointed look. 

“Pamela Isley has become a larger issue than just skimming clientele from me. This new ‘pheromone’ drug of hers has the potency of more than just a hallucinogen and she’s got junkies doing it as much as a person takes a drink or lights up a smoke. We are talking as commonplace as that.”

He glares at Harley then, loosens the tie from around his throat. Harley doesn’t waver her stare into his cold eyes even though the mere mention of Pam’s name has her heart doing somersaults in her chest. 

“So what’s the point?” Harley asks suspiciously. 

“The point…” he grounds out, “is that this has gotten out of hand. We aren’t talking just down a shipment anymore. I’m hemorrhaging money. Might as well go to the rooftops and throw it into the streets. The warehouse should have been a major setback but this ragweed bounced back like a punching bag.”

Harley wants to strangle him, or worse, for the cutdown. It’s better to listen right now though than launch into a tirade. “So whatcha wanna do about it, Mistah J?”

“Let’s just say this has me finding allies in the lowest of places,” he says cryptically, adding a flourish of his hands. 

_ Aren’t we the lowest in tha city? _ Harley wonders. But the life they’ve been leading is pretty cushy so really, there is no place to go but down.  _ Except I’ve got an out from all of this.  _

“Who we working with now? Nygma? Cobblepot?” Harley asks. A ridiculous thought takes hold. “Oh, Jesus. Please don’t say Paul Dekker or Chuck Brown. I can’t take those losers seriously.” A laugh rips through her just thinking about those D-listers. 

“The Joker does not fuck with a man who named himself after what covers his grandmother’s bed or another dipshit that wants to strap a fucking hang glider on his back,” J sneers. He runs a hand through his hair and rolls his shoulders. “No, this is going to be the team-up of the ages, the thing no one saw coming. This is going to be my greatest sleight of hand, my most epic joke.”

Harley has no intention of seeing any of this through. With every pump of her heart, there is the reverberation of her name,  _ Pam _ .

“Do tell, Puddin’” she has to practically ground out. Thankfully, he’s so pleased with himself that he seems to miss the slight quiver in her voice. 

“Harley-girl, this is going to drop every jaw in Gotham. But unfortunately, the little message I sent in the parks only escalated this rivalry of mine with Isley. Where I’m all about flash and grand statements, she prefers to go for the balls when I’m not looking. Which I should have been, an error I will not make again.”

Harley has no idea where all this grandstanding is going anymore, but no part of it feels good. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. 

He turns to her with wolfish eyes and a predatory grin. “I think it’s time to get a little help from my old pal.”

Harley swallows. “Batsy?”

“Batman keeps his eyes turned to the crazy, the unhinged.” Harley wonders how he manages to escape his own characterization. “He’s got nothing to prove. No, I want someone who longs to gain that kind of notoriety for cleaning the ‘scum’ like us off of the streets. I do believe it’s time we give our friend Jim Gordon the lowdown on Pammy.”

Harley laughs but then bites it off when he looks at her with venom, a scowl contorting the features of his face. How had she ever fallen so deep in with him? How had she devoted herself to this when people like Pam were out there?

“Tha fuck good is he gonna do? He has to use Batsy mosta the time to even get somethin’ accomplished!” Harley says skeptically. 

J rubs his hands together like warming them by a fire. When he stops, he throws his shoulders back and lifts his chin. “For the bust of the century? I’ll make sure he has the whole cavalry behind him.”

Harley feigns amusement but in reality, her blood runs cold. She’s got to get to Pam. 

///-///

She can’t believe how impossibly fucking happy she feels. Almost incandescent. It’s completely stupid to be feeling like a giddy schoolgirl at the idea of being with a person who in every hour of every day is absolutely bad news. 

The uncertainty, the doubt—couldn’t it all be scraped away if Harley can truly get away from the clutches of that man who wraps her brain? As Pamela stands to look in the mirror, smoothing the fabric over her breasts and hips, she wonders. 

It’s been a long time since she has wanted something this badly, never in another person. She’s built her business to fill the spaces where other things should be in life. 

No matter which way she went, she was wrong before. The lack of wanting tradition, the normal stability afforded to most in life, made people talk. Wanting the opposite of that had also made others whisper. So, she had cut both facets out, only indulging the latter quietly, discreetly. 

But now she wants the loud life, the one chock full of uncertainties and hopes and dreams. The things that had been in her mind as she had touched herself and Harley had been in everything. 

Harley had agreed to meet outside of the club where she had first strutted into Pamela’s life, turning it upside. Five months ago, she would never have gotten caught up in all of this. The Pamela she’s become yearns for something else, something deeper. 

There’s nothing simple about the pull that she feels for Harley. By all intents and purposes, she shouldn’t. But she’s been replaying every second she’s been in the other woman’s presence. 

The way her hips hand moved underneath her fingers, the wild abandon swirling in her blue orbs, the way her lips feel.

Pamela is ruined for anyone else. Her vision has become a tunnel. At the end of it, hopefully, Harley is waiting. Waiting for the two of them to begin. 

She watches the sun set over the city, her heart’s pace growing with each millimeter it sinks lower in the sky. The show it puts on makes her close her eyes against the warmth and colors of it, like she can absorb it and take it everywhere. 

When she opens her eyes and looks at the time on her watch, she decides to gather her things and head toward where it feels like life changes for good. For better. 

After she’s called the driver to be on the way and grabbed her purse, she reaches into her breast pocket to retrieve her phone. Looking at it she frowns.

_ No new messages _

As she makes her way downstairs, she tries to calm herself, the thoughts she’s thinking at cheetah-like speed. 

_ I should have never let Harley go back to that place. I should have gone with her since she was so adamant about it. I need to go to her now, screw plans, screw it all. Please, don’t let something bad happen. Bring her safely to me. I’ll protect her, I promise.  _

It’s not like she’s addressing any higher power, per se. It feels helpful to put it out in the universe though. She tells herself that as she slides into the awaiting car and it begins on its way.

_ Just a little bit longer. Then Harley will be with you. _

Through the black tinted windows, she can still make out the street well. The lights have come up on the city and from this angle at this point in the day, it almost holds an endearing quality. From this point of view, it’s easy to become enamored with it and forget there are monsters at every turn. 

When it boils down to it, she is tired of being one. This could be the start of moving away from that though. While she’s definitely planning a war, there is also an opportunity to move beyond that. If she can just fix the things that need fixing. Pamela reaches for her phone again. 

_ No new messages _

She tries to ignore the prickle of foreboding. The driver lowers the partition to notify her of their imminent arrival. “Five minutes until our destination, Ms, Isley.”

“When we arrive, leave the car instead of finding a place to park,” she commands. She doesn’t know why. There will be hell to pay if any cops arrive wanting to throw their weight around with a parking ticket. “Hopefully this won’t take long.”

When they pull up, there are bodies milling about on the streets, passersby scurrying along quickly to get to their own places. Her heart leaps when she sees Harley leaned against the club’s wall, not too far from the roped off line and a bouncer a few yards away. 

Pamela slides over in the seat and exits almost before the car can come to a complete stop. She can hear the loud pulsating of the music inside and she wishes this were a night where she could drag Harley inside and feel their bodies pressed against one another again. 

But as she approaches, she can tell that isn’t an option when she sees the look in Harley's eyes. They’re wild, shifting, full of adrenaline and warning. Pamela tries not to feel afraid. Before she can even say a word, Harley is pulling her around the edge of the club and kissing her with something akin to desperation. 

She’s too lost in it to put up much of a fight. Not when she’d touched herself to the thought of this woman’s fingers which now dance along the bone of her cheek. Harley smells like sweetness and light, but Pamela had seen the dark in her pupils. 

“What’s wrong?” Pamela manages to break away, to run a thumb across Harley’s lips. 

“Red, they’re going to...he’s gonna…” Harley fights to catch her breath. From kissing or from the gravity of what she’s about to say, Pamela isn’t sure. 

“What’s going on? Talk to me, Harley. Whatever it is, we can figure it out. I promise,” Pamela tries to soothe but it only seems to work Harley into an even greater frenzy. 

“J. He’s bringing Gordon to you. He’s planning on telling the Commissioner everything’s knows about your operation in order to take you down!” Harley rushes out in a flurry. 

Pamela’s mood darkens considerably. She can’t help it. She scoffs. “And how does he plan to do that? If he rats me out to Gordon, he’s only handing his own ass over too.”

“I don’t know,” Harley shakes her head, paces back and forth with chest heaving. “Maybe he thinks that Gordon will cut him a deal, turn the other way or somethin’ if they can make a big bust for the news. He’s doing that thing again where he’s preyin’ on someone’s darker desires and wants. It’s what he did to me!”

Pamela can’t stand it so she grabs Harley’s face between her hands and tries to correct the spin-out that’s happening. When her voice leaves her, it’s calmer than she actually feels. “Listen to me. Whatever he’s got planned, I’m going to be fine. I can be one step ahead. Gordon is like a lot of people in this shit city—he thinks he knows what best and usually ends up on his ass.”

Harley looks distraught still and shakes her head. Pamela’s hands follow the movement. “I was gonna tell him, I swear. But then he started talkin’ about takin’ you down and I couldn’t let him do that! I had to leave and find you as quickly as I could so that he doesn’t win again.” She grabs Pamela’s shoulders. “I never want him to win again.”

Kissing her cheek and holding her tightly around the waist, Pamela pulls out her cell and dials. When the other line goes live, she pulls back slightly and begins spilling out orders. 

“The new warehouse. I need operations broken down and moved. We are going to have to go deep on our backups. Make sure our supply chains are protected. Everyone will need the pill cases of the pheromone. Distribute it to our workers starting now. Looks like our war is heating up. I don’t want one single operation to be touched by him.” Pamela chances a glance at Harley, who looks out across the Gotham street life with a concerned look twisting her features. 

“Harley, what is it?” Pamela holds her phone against her neck. Harley doesn’t respond. “Harley!” Said with more force but again, the same reaction. 

Then the blonde's eyes go wide and Pamela has a split second to see the gleam of the gun barrels shine in the street lights before a commotion erupts and she’s being shoved roughly to the ground. 

Screams pierce her ears and the  _ rat-a-tat-tat _ of automatic weapons, the metallic clang of empty shells hitting the asphalt, tires screeching closely and then engines revving to speed out of sight. 

After the initial chaos, Pamela jolts from the shock to realize what’s just occurred. Her phone lays shattered nearby her open hand where she’d been wrenched to the ground. The heaviness on top of her... _ oh, no. Harley.  _

“Harley?” Pamela rasps out only to realize she’s already crying. “Come on, Harley. Get up.”

Harley doesn’t. 

Pamela can feel a sticky warmth trickling now, wetness sticking to her torso. She manages to maneuver to where Harley is lying on the walkway, blood seeping from two wounds that she can see. 

There’s a large gashed out area on her neck but for the amount of blood flowing, she can’t tell if it’s a graze or direct hit. The other one is most definitely grave because Pamela can see the entry point on Harley’s bare torso. 

“Oh, god. Harley,” Pamela chokes out, ripping her blazer off and with all of her might, pulling the sleeve from its threads to staunch the bleeding where she can. 

There’s another wound on Harley’s leg and Jesus, can this get any worse? Pamela can barely see through her own tear-filled eyes to create a tourniquet with her other sleeve. She yanks the thin blouse from over her head and crams it against the wound on Harley’s torso, leaving herself on only a thin lace camisole. 

There’s even blood on it and Pamela’s hands shake as she tries to save Harley’s life. 

“Red…”

“Harls, please. Hang on,” Pamela pleads. 

“No...no cops…..can’t…”

No hospital. That’s what she’d said after she’d been stabbed. How much does one person have to fucking go through? Pamela lets her blood boil as the rage swirls everywhere in her body. 

She’s no fucking hero, barely even a good person, but she finds superhuman strength as she lifts Harley in her arms and carries her to the waiting car, bullet holes now riddling its surface. 

Her driver rounds his side, hunched and clearly shaken too. “Miss Isley, the hospital?” 

She can’t breathe, let alone talk, so she manages to deposit Harley on the leather seat and gets the door shut. Immediately, she’s crawling over her and losing her camisole too, her chest doing its own heaving now as she throws the soaked blouse on the floor. 

“We can’t go to the hospital!” Pamela practically screams to the driver who peels out, going nowhere yet. 

“Miss Isley, she’s bleeding out. We’ve got to do something!” he cries. 

“My safe house by the docks. Take us there. Also, call Miss Kyle. Tell her we will be needing some supplies. I’m going to have to do some battlefield surgery.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” his tremulous voice has the audacity to ask. 

She doesn’t fault him for it because she has no fucking clue. But if Harley is going to have a fighting chance and not be anywhere near  _ him _ , this is the only option Pamela’s got. And one option? That’s a hell of a lot better than none. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about dragging Crazy Quilt and Kiteman like that. The former I know zero about. The latter annoys me for reasons solely related to the Harley Quinn Animated Series.


	8. Recovery and Recompense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley recovers, Pam makes plans, the tension boils over between the two of them in the best possible way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course Harley is fine. Of course the Joker is a douche. Of course Pam is gonna make it ALL better. As the X-Files fandom says-ATTHS.

There are flashes of light, of sound. Harley thinks that maybe she can taste something too, maybe plastic-y or tinny but then it all just swims into blackness and she’s pulled under again. 

Until she isn’t. 

When she finally manages to open her eyes, she can just make out shapes in her vicinity. The nagging dryness in her mouth and in her throat prevents her from spending too long trying to focus her eyes though, so she grabs at her neck and works to swallow—easier said than done. 

Mercifully, a straw gets shoved between her lips and she takes in the water in a greedy gulp before feeling like it’s all going to repeat on her as her stomach lurches. 

“Slow down there, tiger,” a voice whispers. 

Harley wants to groan because  _ everything _ fucking hurts, but her entire body feels spent of energy so she doesn’t even try to rise up again. 

The faint beep of a monitor sounds and Harley has enough time to process it as her own before she finally makes out the face to the voice. 

“Jewel thief lady,” Harley wheezes out. 

“It’s Selina, but thank you for remembering,” the woman raises her shoulders in mock delight. Her face goes serious then. “Do you know how hard it is to get a whole damn hospital bed, monitors, and other medical supplies to do a surgery at night, even when you’re one of the richest and most notorious crime bosses in Gotham?”

“You sure your name is Selina? Because this sounds like a Riddle,” Harley responds. 

“Oh, you’ve got jokes, do you? I guess that’s a character flaw of living with that moron for as long as you have. You tend to make light of serious events.”

“And what might those be?” Harley tries. Really, it doesn’t feel like she’s got much to lose at this point. Not when she still feels like she’s standing at death’s door. 

“You just had two bullets lodge themselves in your body and a fucking  _ botanist _ had to dig them out. Jesus, show that one there a little respect.” Selina nods over to the form curled up asleep in a chair. Harley’s breath hitches. “Yeah. Pam hasn’t left your side, not even for a second.”

Harley can’t take her eyes off of her. How small she looks, how wrung out.  _ She just saved your life, you idiot. That’s twice now.  _ And what has Harley given her?  _ Nothing but a big fat pain in her ass.  _

Harley gulps. “How long have I been here?”

“We’re on day five I think? I disappeared for a few of those but came back to give my girl a little break. I promised I wouldn’t finish you off for putting Pammy in danger, but she swears to it that you’re in this state because you blocked them from hurting her.”

Oh, right. She had done that. 

While Pamela had been on the phone, Harley had been nervously scanning the street. She’d been on edge since she left the funhouse and when someone gets a knife shoved into them without expecting it (she should have though) it tends to leave them on high alert. 

But it was not enough. She’d managed to save Pamela by some grace bigger than she can pinpoint, but she’s managed to get herself in a whole heap of pain and no doubt made things so much worse. 

“What about J?”

“You know, she never fails to astound me, that one there. How she’s managed to organize picking off your old buddies to come to her side without even leaving this room is astounding. I wonder if your ‘Mistah J’ could even begin to garner that type of dedication,” Selina bemuses.

“I wouldn’t underestimate him. He’s more sadistic than ya know,” Harley sighs in sadness.  _ He’ll stop at nothing.  _

Harley and Selina’s attention moves to the figure stirring in the chair. When Pamela opens her eyes to see Harley awake, the look on her face almost makes Harley’s stall out. Then she’s touching her and pressing her cheek to Harley’s forehead. 

“You may want to lay off, Pam, before she blows up,” Selina points to the jagged marks on the heart monitor. 

“Aww, fuck. I’m not dead,” Harley gets embarrassed and bats Pamela away a little to rip the sticky pads off of her chest. She flings them to the side.  _ There _ ...

“I’ll give you two some space,” Selina murmurs but Harley doesn’t even watch her walk out.

She’s too busy staring at the goddess in front of her. No circles under her eyes or messy hair could ever dissuade Harley from ever thinking Pamela is anything short of the most stunning person to walk the planet. 

“Hey,” Pamela whispers, a small smile tugging at her lips. She runs a soft touch along Harley’s cheek, one she can’t help but lean into.

“Hey, Red.”

Silence passes between them and Harley isn’t sure what else to say. Her thoughts are dark, her body doesn’t feel like her own, and her feelings are all a jumble. Yet Pamela is right there, right fucking  _ there _ and she tries to get past it all. 

Pamela seems to sense this and shakes her head, batting away something quickly from her face.  _ Tears _ . She looks off to the side of the room and clenches her jaw. Just as she’s about to open her mouth, Harley stops her. 

“Sorry, I’m not very chatty. It just feels like I’ve been run over by a train. Guess I’m still a little tired,” Harley tries to offer subterfuge. She’s nothing right now that Pamela needs. 

“Right, of course. Can I at least change your dressings?” she asks quietly and Harley can only nod.

It should be something clinical, methodical. It becomes anything but. Because Pamela slowly inches up Harley’s hospital gown to expose her creamy thigh when she unwinds the bandage on her leg. Because she gingerly helps Harley out of the arms of the garment so she can work at the wound on her abdomen. 

With every brush of her fingers, every electric touch, Harley becomes increasingly grateful that the heart monitor is no longer on her. Always one to deflect seriousness with humor, she tries to cut through the tension that’s boiling over with a lame joke.

“Not exactly how I pictured getting naked with you,” Harley quips. 

Pamela’s hands still and she glances up from cutting a long strip of gauze. They hold one another's looks for a few moments. Pamela doesn’t smile. She eventually breaks eye contact and goes back to her work. 

“I’ve seen you twice now, you know,” she finally mutters as she finishes up and helps Harley back into the arm of her gown. 

“Yeah, guess you’re down a couple then,” Harley tries to shrug nonchalantly. She winces when her neck hurts from the gesture. Oddly, this is finally what brings a smile to Pamela’s face.

“Look at who can’t be cocky now,” Pamela shoots her a look. There’s a bit of levity in it. Harley has to let out her own mock contempt.

“Look, I know it was an exciting thrill for you to see all of this,” Harley motions up and down her battered and bruised body. “But sometimes a little reciprocation would be nice.”

“Then I suppose you should work on your recovery so that I can get you caught up,” Pamela offers offhandedly, like it's nothing instead of a hell of a lot of something.

Harley almost chokes on her own tongue. Managing to gain composure, she lets the implication of the words actually process in her brain. _ If Red’s offering...why not push it? Isn’t this what you two have been stumbling toward? _

“How long are we talkin’ then?” Harley finally shoots back, eyes holding a challenge. She’ll somersault out of the bed tomorrow if it means figuring out what’s under this woman’s clothes. 

But then again, it isn’t just about that anymore anyway. Not when Harley has two bullet holes and a slicing gash across her body because she acted as a human shield for her. Yeah, so she had touched herself to the idea of Pamela several days ago but it wasn’t just carnal desire for her. You can have sex with someone without throwing your life on the line for them.

_ Am I in love with her? _ Harley wonders. It’s a fine question to ask but she finds no answer within herself. 

‘“Another week probably until the wounds no longer require changing,” Pamela says factually, back to sounding like a doctor instead of a drug lord. 

“How long before sexual activity then?” Harley leans in to whisper in her ear. 

Pamela stills her with the blaze of her green eyes, their faces inches apart when Harley pulls back to look at her. She tilts her head to the side and stares at Harley’s lips. “What happened to being tired?”

“I guess you know how to bring a girl back to life, Red,” Harley breathes. “In more ways than one.”

“I did just save you,” Pamela reminds. 

“I saved you first.” Harley frowns. 

“Mmm, so I guess in order to pay you back for that and to catch up on earlier’s tally,” she ghosts her lips across Harley’s. “You better rest up.” Pamela stands abruptly, leaving Harley chasing air. 

“No fair,” Harley pouts and leans back against the bed. 

“It won’t be either if you don’t get your strength back for what I have planned.” The words are downright sin and Harley can’t calm the ache elsewhere now. 

_ Well, you did this to yourself really. Great job, Harley.  _ It doesn’t stop the groan that escapes her. Pamela seems to find it amusing because her eyes hold playfulness to them even though they’d been traversing the edge of a lusty knife just seconds ago. And lately, Harley knows something about sharp objects. 

Just as Pamela goes to leave whatever room she’s stuffed Harley in as a makeshift hospital room, she stops her forward progress and stands for a few quiet seconds. When her voice comes out, it’s faint. “Why did you kiss me that first time in the park? Even after what I had done to you.”

Harley sighs and goes with the truth packing her heart. “A lot of reasons. I wanted to since the club. I wanted to do anything to make you feel how sorry I was. I wanted you to know how beautiful I thought you were.”

Pamela only nods and then opens the door wider. “I have a few things to take care of but I will be back soon.”

“Do any of those things include J?”

It goes unanswered as a dark look passes over Pamela’s beautiful features and she slips out the door. Harley growls and wills her body to heal faster.

///-///

She leaves Harley’s room in a brisk clip. Her hands are balled at her sides and while she shouldn’t have an ounce of fight left in her, she feels like she could tear down the world tonight. Making her way to her office space, she peels off her jacket and throws it roughly in the chair as Walter and another of her bodyguard henchmen follow. 

“We are we at?” she practically barks. 

The two men share a look and then Walter turns to her. “We’ve managed to bring half of his men into our fold. They’re currently being housed at our hideout near the chemical plant. We still have people disrupting operations there regularly too.”

Pamela sits down in a leather chair, leans forward on the mahogany of the desk. Her brain runs at the speed of light and she chews on the inside of her cheek. “He will always have something coming out of the woodworks to fight for him. If we are going to go up against him and Gordon’s men, we are going to have to play this smart.” She thinks a moment. “How many do we have on the inside of Gordon’s precious force?”

“About half a dozen of our men with just as many rogue cops joining. They’re tired of Joker running Gotham. Tired of his power. You’re the lesser of the two evils so they’re on board to reshape the way this town runs,” Walter explains. 

“Be prepared to move at any time,” Pamela commands. “Keep your ears open and your heads low to the ground. Make sure my new crew members are staying loaded up on the pheromone. We can’t lose control of them.”

“So far so good, boss.”

“Back off on pushing as much on the streets too. Let’s let that piece of shit think he’s got the upper hand on the drug game so he loses focus on his worker bees being poached. Also move some of ours into his ranks. We want him to not be able to do a 360 without wondering who is on his side,” she continues. 

This whole thing is bordering on titanic. Ever since the synthetic version of her pheromone started being distributed to disrupt the man’s operations, it’s grown in scale and size. But he’s shown that you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Or even a gun. You roll up in tanks and blow everything away. 

“That will be all,” she dismisses the men and stands, putting her hand on her hips. 

Moving to a decanter sitting on a table nearby, she pours two fingers worth of alcohol and opens her throat, slamming it back. It does little to alleviate the crash she feels occurring, the way her body is trying to remind her that she pushed it too hard. 

Instead of moving to her own bed in her loft downtown, she goes back into the room where Harley has finally fallen back asleep. Moving over to her bedside, she carefully reaches out and touches her hand. 

Pamela looks then, really takes in everything and all that is Harley. The blonde hair with a swirl of colors on the ends, the smooth skin, the wiry muscles. Her mouth quirks but then flattens again. 

There are bruises too. Scars. Long and short, jagged and straight swaths that carve a tale of abuse, a life of anguish and hurt lived. But Harley has come out on the other side. 

She doesn’t know Harley’s background, doesn’t know her story. What she’s found, the hard facts, don’t tell the story of the woman’s life the way her eyes do, the way Pamela could almost feel her heart doing. 

_ You’ve fallen _ , she tells herself.  _ So far, so deep. Your head has been pulled under and you don’t even care as long as she sinks with you.  _

And while it should frighten the everloving crap out of her, she feels irrational contentment. Like maybe this is the point of life. The thing other people have always had and she’s denied herself. Well tonight? She’s ready to take. She’s tired of never having. She wants everything. 

///-///

Harley gets to move out of the hospital bed three days after waking up. When she falls back into the bed from the last time she was in Pamela’s loft, she starfishes widely and lets out a satisfied hum. 

“The vertebrae and discs in my back thank you,” Harley closes her eyes as the mattress envelopes her. 

After a few seconds, she feels the bed dip and they snap open to see Pamela beside her and resting on her side, an elbow and hand holding up her face. She looks down at Harley with a clouded look.

“Wait, is this my reward for good behavior? I didn’t realize it was happening now,” Harley sits up quickly but winces at the tenderness still in several places. 

Pamela soothes her with a hand on her shoulder when Harley falls back onto the mattress. 

“No,” she rolls her eyes. “Nothing is happening now. You still have to heal some. I just…” 

She makes a face and then mutters  _ fuck it _ , continuing on. “I just wanted to be closer to you than that hospital bed would allow.”

Harley laughs but motions her to close the distance and Pamela lays down, bringing her body up as close to Harley as she can without actually touching. She lays on her side and lets her nose run along the top of Harley’s shoulder. 

“You seem far off,” Harley observes. She reaches out with a hand and runs her fingers through Pamela’s hair, using her nails a bit against her scalp in a delicate scratch.

Pamela curls in more to Harley’s side, her knees brushing at the side of Harley’s thigh and hip without the gunshot wounds. She hums lowly as Harley watches her close her eyes against the sensations of being touched.

It’s a weird domesticity that Harley hadn’t planned on giving but now that it is happening, she wishes she had more chances to have done it all along. Pamela doesn’t seem like the type of woman to seek this type of thing out, much less have anyone offer to do it. 

_ Except for Selina. _

Harley tries to block any more thoughts from attaching to that one for fear of spinning out of control with only her mind to create false scenarios. The woman had said that she and Pamela hadn’t been together in  _ that way  _ so maybe she needs to take it at value. 

“There’s a lot going on,” Pamela answers cryptically, the words sort of lost against the cotton of Harley’s shirt on her shoulder. 

“I’m here. You can talk to me. Tell me what I can do.” It’s a feeble feeling, knowing that she can’t offer much except emotional support. Not until her body gets past the mend. 

“I’d like to say make me forget, but I know that’s not possible,” the redhead looks into her blue eyes. 

“Believe me, I want nothing more than that,” Harley lets out, exasperated. She turns her head to run her nose along the curling tendrils of Pamela’s hair. Moving a hand to cup the woman’s cheek, she looks at her observantly and then shakes her head. “Why do I feel like I want to give you absolutely everything, even if it’s outta this world, batshit insane?”

“Careful,” Pamela warns and sits upright, leaving Harley’s side. 

Harley finds herself confused. Hadn’t they just been so close to something  _ again _ ? Now Pamela is pulling away. She watches as fingers thread through increasingly messy red hair. 

“In some regards, I’m no better than him,” she says, her hands on her hips and her look far off—gaze moving to outside of the window, the bleeding of the light to the day. 

“Red, Pam...that’s not…”

“But it is, isn’t it? True I mean,” she turns back to Harley, palpable anguish to her voice, her features. “I’ve built my business from the ground up. Done things I’m not proud of. But what I’ve got in the works is my darkest yet, my desire tied to it just as black. I  _ want _ to end him. I  _ want _ to stop this once and for all and show Gotham that it’s sick, dying. I want it to look at itself, battered and bloody, and decide it can’t keep limping along the way it is. It’s no good to anyone like it is, not with men like J thinking he can puppeteer it with his fingers.”

Harley sits up then, dangles her knees over the edge of the bed. Her palms hit the soft sheets, fingers curling a little as she leans forward. 

“Listen to me, Pamela Isley. You wouldn’t be who you are today if there wasn’t something in you worth following. The people you employ, the friends you have. None of it would be possible if you weren’t absolutely magnetic,” Harley tries to reason with her. “It’s why even with men like J running a part of this town, people like me would rather die by your side than stay anywhere near him.”

Because yeah, Harley supposes, she’s to this point now. Unlike a cat, she doesn’t have nine lives and Pam’s already brought her back from the brink twice. 

It all goes back to what she’s felt with a beating incessence since the club. Like this woman before her was another piece of herself she hadn’t known to look for, like their essence was meant to twirl together and become something great.

Harley has never believed in shit like soulmates or people being made for one another, but it’s hard to deny that pull. Somehow, inexplicably, she knows that Pamela and her belong together, no matter what life or what story or what ending life is supposed to have, that the two of them are meant to stand together in it, at it. 

“The road ahead is a dark one,” Pamela admits, another warning. 

Harley already had some sense of it, but it doesn’t deter her at all, even with two holes and a gash on her body. She shakes her head, batting the fact away. “Doesn’t matter,” she grabs Pamela’s hand. “I’m already there. We’re together.”

///-///

She tries not to let it consume her but every second of breathing is filled with it. Days pass and the week is soon almost eaten up. 

When she’s not keeping a watchful eye on Harley’s recovery, she’s walking her warehouses, visiting operations. As she stares into the blown pupils of J’s men, high as a mountaintop on mind control pheromone, she knows it’s time to strike. Had heard through multiple sources that Gordon plans to move so she wants to beat him to his own punch.

It’s supposed to happen at sundown tomorrow. And she’s more than confident they’re ready. The cogs are already in motion and are poised to stall out when they’re told. 

Pamela pulls open the door and waits to be hit with a flurry of sound connected to her housemate for the past week. What she’s met with is only the quiet. She purses her lips and lets her mind wander. 

While on one hand it’s been easy to give Harley the time to heal, on the other, every moment has been fraught with tension too. Like they’re both circling each other with yellow eyes, waiting for the moment when it’s alright to pounce. 

And Pamela’s been itching to get at Harley for months now. It’s more than anything she can categorize, more than she dares try to. The need hasn’t abated, only been rearranged. 

She refuses to push, even though she has no idea what tomorrow might bring. If all she’s meant to have of Harley are the few kisses they’ve shared, the tender touches, well, she’ll take those too. Because even though feeling good feels odd, it’s also the best thing in the entire fucking world. 

After checking several rooms and finding nothing, Pamela finds her in the greenhouse area of her loft. When she sees her, her mouth goes dry. 

Her red and black sneakered feet rest against a vine covered wall, the bandage of her leg no longer wrapped around her thigh. Pamela can make out the puckered scabbing of the wound, looking fairly well considering. Only a little purple surrounds it now. 

Her abdomen is cleaned, the mark there looking much the same as her leg. Still a little colored but healing quite well. Below it, muscles tense and ripple with her movements.

Harley’s strong arms hold her up, gloved fingers flexing now and again and dipped pigtails dragging on the floor. Her face is intense, concentrating, and her brow remains furrowed even when Pamela leans sideways to catch her eyes. 

“I wouldn’t even need this wall if I hadn’t been shot,” Harley grouses. “I can hold a perfect handstand for forever.”

“Give yourself some credit, here. Everyone has to go through physical therapy for a traumatic injury. Your recovery has gone exceedingly well, all things considered.”

_ Like me making myself not touch you into oblivion.  _ That goes unsaid, thankfully. But even so, Harley’s look goes hooded and she kicks off from the wall, twisting to land on her feet. 

She’s sweaty, breathing heavily. Pamela can see the sheen on her skin and she wants nothing more than to run her hand along it, taking some back with her. There’s a sense of urgency in her eyes that Pamela picks up on, one that makes her own blood thrum rampantly in her body. It tells her about it everywhere, even the dangerous places.

When Harley undoes her crop top and throws it at Pamela’s feet, she can’t even make her mouth emit a sound. Harley does it for her, ambling forward in her sports bra and small shorts. “I think it’s time for the type of therapy only you can give.”

It’s meant to be sexy, lust filled. Pamela bursts out with a laugh and Harley makes a face. “Hey, look, I tried. Sort of sucks that I’m all sexy and seductive all tha time except the one I’m really trying to be though.”

Pamela reaches out then, touches her bare hips, and presses her fingers into each rib on the unmarred side.

“Oh, Harley, trust me. You’re those things no matter what you do,” Pamela assures and then swoops her into a languid kiss. 

“Whether you’re dancing against me, rotating those wicked hips…” she begins to puff hot breaths on Harley’s skin as she speaks in various places. “Whether you're kissing me in broken places.” Below her ear on her neck. “Whether you’ve made a joke.” Her collarbone. “Or if you’re doing handstands against walls.” Pamela pulls Harley’s sports bra down a bit, taking a soft nip at the top swell of her breast. 

“Why is it that every time we are near one another, it feels like a bomb is gonna go off?” Harley huffs out, a heady thing lined with desire. 

“Because you are good at blowing things up?” Pamela suggests, pulls down the Lycra of it, and takes a long swipe against the peak of her. 

“Wow, now who’s jokin’...geez,” Harley grounds out when lips close against her. 

Pamela does a few swirls but then feels the incessant ache down below. Pulling up quickly, she cups Harley’s face in her hands. “No joking. I’m serious when I say I want to have you tonight. I don’t know what tomorrow holds but I need you, right here, right now. Harley, please, let me make love to you.”

She doesn’t mince the words. Pamela knows exactly what she’s said.  _ Not sex. Love.  _ It’s the truest thing she’s ever spoken. 

Harley picks up on the diction, seems to understand the depth of the word choice. Her face softens and after a few seconds, she steps back, eyes never leaving Pamela. 

Pulling her bra over her head, she shimmies out of her shorts and toes off her sneakers. All of it becomes a pile on the floor while Pamela stands wholly dressed. She raises an eyebrow at the confidence, looks appraisingly up and down Harley’s body. The one that is so much more beautiful than she pictured it with her hand against herself. 

“Pick up your clothes and go to my room,” Pamela commands. It’s hard to calm the thundering beat of her heart, the lightning adrenaline in her veins. 

Harley does as she’s asked but stops at the door, throwing a sultry look over her shoulder. She reaches out and wraps her fingers around Pamela’s, lacing them together and dragging her through the house to her bedroom. 

Pamela never trails her eyes away from her naked body, all of it gloriously uncovered and shining. So easy for the taking. But she doesn’t. She lets Harley lead her to the foot of her bed, let’s her step in behind her and bury her nose in her hair. 

They don’t move to the bed, instead Harley’s bare form pressed against her clothed back and hands pressing into the wispy hunter colored blouse at her stomach. Pamela can feel her hot lips through the fabric as Harley kisses and sucks along her shoulder. 

The control she’d started with, had wanted, is pushed back and away. Pamela decides to let Harley guide them tonight, to show her how she needs to be touched and cared for and loved. She owes her that, owes her more. She owes her her life. 

Harley’s fingers begin their work on the shell-like buttons, deft but meticulous too. Slow. Agonizingly so.

_ What are another few minutes when I’ve been waiting months for this? _ hums through Pamela’s brain. Which stalls out a bit when Harley pulls her shirt from her slacks and bunches the sides into her fists. 

She uses them to pull Pamela back into her, rotating her bare hips to grind against the curved flesh of Pamela’s bottom. Her breath is hot in Pamela’s ear and she begins to say things that are only meant to go inside of hearts and between thighs. 

There’s the plumpness and dueling wetness of lips meeting skin for the first time as Harley lets the green fabric wisp down in a cascade to the floor from Pamela’s arms. She immediately pounces again, hands roaming the mountains and valleys of Pamela’s body. 

The button on her slacks is popped and they pool on the floor as she steps out of her heels. Harley dips below bra, below underwear, and gets the desired responses from each. Peak, soak. 

Harley is good at this, good at slow and meandering and maddening all at once. Just like Pamela knows she is equally as talented with fast and hard and mind-numbing. But this is somewhat surprising, to say the least. 

“What have I done to deserve you like this, deserve you at all,” Harley is reverent in her words. “Who gets fairy tales like this?”

_ Like us _ , Pamela knows she wants to say.  _ People like us who go against the grain of what is mostly goodness and truth and light.  _

But wolves are at the door, hair raised and teeth gnashing. There is more than one type of fairy tale, she wants to say. There are no clever disguises by them. They come as they are. 

Pamela spins, does her own exploring now. A dusting of her lips, a chiseling with her hands. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” she admits against the rapid rise and fall of Harley’s chest, eventually mutters it from between her thighs. 

She plunges into the river of sweetness and listens to the eruption of sound that’s like a song as she sinks and emerges time and time again. The bed cradles them both, holds them up to keep them from stalling out. 

Harley’s ragged cry is a long time coming, her awe-filled eyes and body lurching with release, and Pamela watches it all from the juncture of her legs. 

She’s dragged upward then thrust down upon wet center and jerking hips. It’s nice and sends her eyes rolling into the back of her head as she does her own kind of rotating. Sensing good vibrations but a faraway end, Harley reaches down and adds her hands to the heat. 

Whatever staying power Pamela’s had, whatever want she’s had to prolong the fruition, it evaporates on the sex-filled air. The sound of them, the smell of them, the way Pamela looks on top of her and Harley down underneath sends her flying off the edge. 

Maybe her toes curl at the intensity, maybe it’s the best thing she’s ever fucking had. Maybe she’s a cliche and ridiculous mess who accidentally says  _ I love you  _ somewhere under the waves of her blinding orgasm. 

Maybe she chastises herself a little as she lays atop Harley’s still sweat-slicked skin. Maybe she falls asleep grateful she’s gotten to say it anyway. 


	9. Time For a Showdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for a showdown

The GCPD headquarters was going through a shift change. Those who had come in at 5 were now seeing their 12-hour shift end—that’s if they even went home. 

Amid the donut boxes, empty coffee cups, police reports, parking citations, and court notices, bodies intersected on their way in and out. Some remained with elbows or feet atop battered wood-grained desks, eyes bleary, and nerves frayed.

Some talked jovially by a water cooler and snack machine, others passed through the hallways in silence. Many types of people, many types of life. All going about their daily business, as per usual. 

But outside of the main room, outside of the watchful eyes of the lower level beat cops and meter readers, others were donning tactical gear, riot helmets, heavy artillery guns, and smoke grenades. If their arsenal would need it, they had it. 

Jim Gordon overlooked them all, strapping on his own bulletproof vest and checking his police-issued weapon to make sure it was fully loaded again. That precision he always had before a bust. This time, the target was the poison villainous Isley. 

He’d never admit to taking the tip from the notorious Mr. J at a greater value than face. But if his words were true, his laugh filling the speaker as it pushed out all over the GCPD bullpen, then Jim Gordon was about to have a career-making night. 

For what he had in sheer determination and heart, he also lacked foresight and, to some regard, realism. 

He worked every day removing low lives and scum from the streets but his altruistic nature still left him searching for the good in people instead of recognizing the bad. His hope for Gotham was his character flaw and tonight, it would be his downfall. 

Pamela Isley’s men glanced over at him as they put on their gear. They looked at all of the others who worked in the name of law, of order. 

They looked with black pupils at the scene unfolding. Their fingers itched. Miss Isley was waiting to relieve them with a scratch. 

///-///

She wakes up wrapped around the very bare limbs of Pam. Sleeping, ethereal, draped in waves of red Pamela Isley who makes her heart stutter, lurch, and stall out completely. 

Pamela Isley who is kind, gentle, loving. Who touched her in a way she’d never been touched, who had murmured things to her last night, beautiful and dreamlike things that she could barely internalize as true. Things that Harley wanted to believe with all of her soul. 

But Pam is calculated, shielded. There is a darkness to her that Harley doesn’t fear exactly but also doesn’t know what to expect either. She is only able to brace herself, brace against Pam, and weather whatever storm the woman unleashes. 

That dichotomous split, the people she can become, who she can be—Harley loves her deeply. Had stubbornly known it the second she’d taken the stitches out of her shoulder that Pam had woven so carefully. 

And even though Pam is her own storm, Harley has never felt more confident being with her. At wanting to calm the swirl from maelstrom to rainshower. To take a guarded heart, reach into a chest, and hold it safely for all eternity. 

With day dawning and filtering through the large window in Pam’s room though, the idea of it pops and fizzles away rapidly. When this enchanting woman opens her eyes to begin her day, nothing will ever be the same again. Because in a matter of hours now—not days—she is moving on J, on GCPD. 

The thought of Pam defending her territory, of wiping Gotham of J and all he stands for is a lofty concept. But what frightens Harley even more, what terrifies her beyond belief, is a hidden root under it all: she is doing it for Harley too. 

As if sensing Harley’s thoughts, Pam’s eyelashes flutter against the smooth expanse of her neck, green eyes opening to the world again. While she relishes in the way she scoots closer and holds tightly, Harley is also cognizant of the fleeting time. 

“So how would you suggest we spend what might be our last day on earth?” Harley asks, brooding somewhat but serious too.

It’s not meant to negate what’s happened during the night, but Harley hates letting go of things. It seems unfair to get Pam and then lose her in one fell swoop. 

Pamela sits up, sheets slipping down her body as she rises to look at Harley below. Harley doesn’t even try to hide her outright stare at her body. It’s too perfect to ignore. When a hand glides along her cheek, she turns her focus back. 

“Do you think that’s where this is headed tonight?” Pam asks softly. 

Harley knows J. She knows what Pam believes too. What Gordon stands for. The probability of them all making it out alive seems low. More likely the complete opposite. 

“Do you think we’re not?” Harley can’t help but let the emotion take over her face. Her throat tightens. “He’s stabbed me, shot at you. What makes you think any of this ends well tonight?” An idea flutters, beats its wings against Harley’s brain. “Let’s run. Just leave this forsaken place and  _ be _ together, like we should be.”

“What?” Pam’s face looks confused, bordering on angry. “After all this time, knowing what he’s done to Gotham. To me, to others in this city. To  _ you _ .” Her voice goes ice when she gets to his transgressions on Harley.

“Leave this rotting stink hole to him then. Let’s go somewhere where you can have your dreams and I can have you and none of this matters anymore,” Harley pleads, reaching between them to connect their hands. 

Pam stands, devoid of anything, her strong and lean muscles rippling in her body as she stands. She’s athletic, well-toned, indicating she’s no stranger to physicality. The kind she’s likely to need soon. 

“I can’t,” she says, real anguish in her. She turns then, hurt etched in her features. “As much as I’d love nothing more than to walk away with your hand in mine, I can’t abandon this city. I vowed to fix it and I owe it that, especially since I’ve had a hand at breaking parts of it for years. It’s time I did something better. Bigger than what I’ve been doing.”

“You can’t save the world!” Harley cries. “Be selfish for once. Do something you want to do.”

“If I see the sunrise tomorrow, I will. But tonight, I’m making the shadows come out. I’m taking away their darkness with torches and light and I’m going to bring back the things that they’ve killed.”

“Pam, Red. This is crazy,” Harley sighs, defeated. 

“I’m not going to ask you to lay your life on the line for some cause of mine,” Pam tells her. 

“I said I’d be here. That I’d walk by your side no matter what.” Harley rises from the bed now. Feels like covering herself when Pam zeroes in on the still visible gunshot wound markers. 

She’s kissing Harley then, hard. There are teeth and her tongue darts out in askance. It’s easy to feel what she’s doing. She’s kissing Harley goodbye. The confirmation comes seconds later. 

“I don’t want you there tonight,” Pam breathes out in a whisper, and Harley’s heart absolutely fucking breaks. “Please.”

With one word, it’s sealed. Harley can’t put up the fight against the thing she loves most in the world, even when it’s staring her in the face asking her to let go. 

With every part of her chest collapsing in on itself, she agrees.

///-///

When her men turn on the cops, quick and deft movements plucking one down after another, the chaos begins. 

They’d just moved into position at her largest warehouse, one she’d intentionally left with product so they could get scans of movement within. But the movement was all thanks to J’s pilfered cronies. If the GCPD were going to take anyone down first, it was going to be them. 

But with the efficiency, they’d mowed down the heroes of the group who went in guns blazing and managed to disarm and hog tie the rest, throwing them in an armored truck with the key strapped around a broad chest. 

Gordon’s glasses had clanged to the ground, his beady eyes now staring up at pitch-black ones as he scraped his knees on the concrete. 

“What the fuck is going on?” he screamed. “Who are you and what are you doing?”

“Miss Isley sends her regards and another message. Mr. J is the real villain of this town and she aims to take him head on. Tonight, she fights for Gotham. Tonight, she fights for a better tomorrow.”

“This is bullshit! She’s just as guilty as him. I don’t care how many parks she rebuilds, how many committees she’s on, or gives money to. There is no gray area between right and wrong!” Gordon yells. 

It’s the last thing he does. There’s a boot to his face knocking him unconscious soon after. 

///-///

When the cavalry doesn’t arrive but he does, Pamela rests a hand on her hip, examining her nails on the other. Even so, she never loses her eye on him as he saunters forward, a much smaller group of men behind him than he’d usually garner. Still, more than he fucking deserves. 

“Ah, Pammy. A showdown for the ages. By the end of this night, Gotham will belong to one of us. You sure it’s worth fighting for?” he calls out across the gap between them. 

She glances up then, eyes alight with fire. “I’ve come this far. I hardly see the value in tapping out before it starts.”

Boldly, idiotically, he strides forward, black suit jacket pressed to within an inch of his hopefully soon to be dead body and crisp white shirt and tie under it. His hair is longer than she remembers but the same sickening green. 

Not the kind she loves. Wholly the kind she hates. Unnatural, fake. 

He runs a hand through it, tousles it to look somewhat like the boyish scoundrel he could have been ten years ago if he hadn’t been gnashing his teeth inside of Arkham. If he hadn’t sunk those same teeth into a blonde beacon of light. 

“I’ve let you run free for far too long. Amass too much power and think you’re hot shit. But baby, Gotham was never yours,” he smiles like he’s breaking a secret to her. One she didn’t know. His grin spreads. “And where is my Harley-girl? Thought for sure you’d have fucked her over to your side by now.”

Pamela doesn’t miss the pronoun usage:  _ my _ . It scalds her from the inside out. She doesn’t want to talk about Harley because the ache of what she’s asked her to do is still too fresh. It’s better to dodge the comment and not give him a place to pick at. 

“I wouldn’t call ambushing me with a drive-by letting me run free,” she sneers. 

“Well, I’d say it worked out just fine because here you stand,” J flashes a toothy smile. “I guess that’s what happens when you have human body armor though. Truly, I hadn’t planned on punching holes into Harley, but that was a delicious added bonus.”

_ Engage _ , she grits out and all hell breaks loose. 

The bodies swarm then, meeting much like a clash between opposing sources in some epic battlefield film. There are so many people, so many arms and limbs and weapons, and eventually, blood, that she loses sight of him in the chaos.

An explosion behind them erupts, car bombs being set off in quick succession. One is too close for comfort and she has to cover herself as the flames fan out, licking everything within its vicinity. When she looks back, her red hair dances on the gusting wind, mimicking the flames. 

She sees him standing upon one of the smoking hulls of a vehicle, his hands spread wide and the fire reflected in his eyes. 

“Yes, yes!” he screams over the din. “Burn it all to the ground! Take Gotham back from those who aim to have us crawling on our bellies for all eternity. Tonight, we rise. When the sun comes up, I will be the King of Gotham-no bat or cat or  _ plant _ will end my reign.” He glares at her then, a sinister smile twisting on his lips.

“He’s mine,” Pamela growls into her iWatch, sending the message to all those fighting for her, a warning for them to leave every single hair on his head alone before she rips it out. 

She sheds her coat, the twin shoulder holsters carrying engineered smoke and gas bombs in tiny baubles. They glow neon in the fading light and she flips the holder off two and lobs them his direction with the form of a pitcher. 

The glass shatters and the gasses rise. She thinks she can see his still plastered on grin through the thickly forming smoke. When she strides through it to the car where he was standing, he’s managed to slip away.

“Ah ah ah, Pammy. One step behind, like always,” his voice mocks, taunts. She smashes the recorder on top of the car with the heel of her palm and catches sight of him disappearing into her warehouse behind the fighting masses.

She walks over bodies, around them. Her vision is narrowed, thoughts hollowed. There is only him. If he thinks meeting her on her own territory is going to still garner him a victory, he is sorely mistaken. As soon as she throws open the door, lights begin to shatter overhead, leaving the place swathed in a semi glow. Otherwise, darkness.

Glancing up at the rafters, she assesses where he could be hiding jjudging by the trajectory of the bullets and the glass shard patterns. She feels him rather than sees him and shoots up a palm to stop the butt of his gun from clocking her in the jaw. 

He’s strong, unnaturally so almost, but she manages to shove it aside roughly. He circles her then, like a shark with chum in the water. Grinning, always fucking grinning.

“A duel to the death, Pammy. How epic,” he expounds and throws off his jacket with flair. He even tosses his dual pistols to the side. “Bang, bang,” he sneers, spittle pouring from his lips. “While I do love the smell of gunshot residue and blood on my hands, I’d much rather take the life from you with my bare hands.” 

He offers them palms up, empty. A challenge. Pamela can’t believe what she’s doing, but she removes the holstered baubles and lays them on the ground. She’s not afraid of hand to hand combat, but she also knows enough to understand he has something up his sleeve too.

She has a split second to process what’s happening before he’s raining down blow after blow. Sometimes she manages to feint, other times parry. It’s hard to get a strike in though, especially when he leaves no space for one at all. 

_ You’re going to die like this if you don’t do something, Pamela!  _ She shouts internally to herself. That’s because he connects brutally with the side of her temple sending her reeling and seeing stars. 

She just manages to gain her composure before he jumps wildly in the air and brings another fist right between her shoulder blades. It might be her imagination, but she thinks she hears the shatter of it between the raggedness of their breathing. The twin pain attached to it feels like a hot poker shoved into her body.

Her red hair spills into her face like a waterfall, her black jean covered knee scraping the floor roughly as she kneels. Blood trickles into her eye. She seethes. 

Her head is yanked back roughly, his grip fisted in the tangles of hair, and she’s staring down the barrel of a gun—one that he shouldn’t have had on him in a bare-fisted fight. 

Not surprising at all. But she’s got something of her own up her sleeve. Or pressed against the inside of her boot. But she waits until she has the leverage as he twists her around to stare up at his face. It’s the same derision on it from before. 

“Pretty Pammy on her knees for me,” he growls. “So many implications, almost submission. But I can’t count on that, can I? Total capitulation?”

“Fuck. You,” Pamela spits out each word punctuated.

He does it so quickly, points the gun, and pulls the trigger. She flinches, her heart seizes. But she’s not dead. Opening a green eye, she’s looking at a ridiculous flag with ‘Bang’ painted on it. 

“Sleight of hand,” J whispers close to her face, a hand still wrapped in her tresses. “Let’s give you a little something to match my girl.”

Realization hits and she’s got just enough wherewithal to jerk sideways before the knife buries in her back. He lets go when he misses, a snarl spilling from his lips as the knife clangs to the ground. 

Pamela goes to reach for it but he kicks it away. Taking the opening, she brings up a foot solidly into his knee cap. It buckles underneath the force. 

His scream rattles the tin walls of the warehouse. She rises then, connecting her own fist to the side of his face. Another one lands as she does an uppercut to his chin. As she walks up on him, he sweeps his good leg, knocking her down. 

As he stalks across the space between them, she curls her leg a little as her window opens and with the speed and grace of a samurai, she yanks the knife from her boot and slices upward in an arc. 

She feels the moment it slides into his flesh, the blade of it ripping from the edge of his mouth upward to his cheekbone. His hand goes to it immediately as the blood pours through his fingers. 

When he pulls it away, Pamela gapes at the damage she’s done. The torn mark curves upward in a violent grimace like a smile. He wipes it with a white sleeve. 

“Playtime’s fucking over!” he bellows and a real gun materializes, one that is seconds from blowing Pamela away. 

Her eyes widen as she sees the diamond covered mallet behind him also whizzing downward through the air at the same time he pulls the gun, the knuckles turning white as hands grip the wooden handle tightly. 

She’d gasp if she had the time to. She might even yell stop. Something, anything other than watching in stony silence as the wood connects with bone, muscle, skin. 

He was supposed to be Pamela’s to rid the world of. In some poetic turn of events, Harley does it for them both. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure when the last chapter will drop. I've got part of it written but writer's block has been plaguing me for the last week. I will try to make it super fluffy/sexy/everything in between for a satisfying conclusion!


	10. Fairytales and Fables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the road, happily ever after

She’s by Pamela’s side in seconds, tears streaming down her face and breath shuddering from her body. As she tries to pull the woman in for a bruising hug, grateful she made it in time, Pamela pulls back with a loud hiss. 

“Ah!” she grounds out and brings a hand up to her shoulder. 

Harley’s eyes are wide as she goes in more gently this time, laying a questioning hand barely upon her. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“He got the fucking drop on me. I think my shoulder is broken,” Pamela says, grinding her teeth against the pain. 

Harley can’t help but turn back to the rumpled corpse behind them, the pool of crimson growing larger with every moment that passes. 

“I always thought if I stuck around, if I believed in him and cared, that maybe I could save him,” Harley admits. It’s a sorrowful set of words, of regret and licks of anger. Of a destroyed hope that was never fulfilled. 

“I thought that was our great love story—saving one another but…” Harley trails off, turns away from his cooling body to look Pamela in the eyes. “No one ever saved me. Not until you. That’s the difference. This grand tale of romance me ‘n J were supposed ta have? We have that, Red. Not the other way around.”

Pamela feels a lot of things in a lot of places. More pressing, the radiating pain in her shoulders and back. Past that, her own brand of rage but with its edges filed. Still there, but dull. She feels the impact of Harley’s words, the frankness of them creating chemicals within her head, pushing against her heart. 

“That’s if you meant what you said when we...last night,” Harley works at finding the right words.

Afraid of spooking Pamela, no doubt. Afraid she’d said them in the throes of a moment of bliss. Yanked forth by something fleeting and one off, something that didn’t stay. Pamela laughs, the adrenaline leaking out of her in a way that has things feeling like air spilling out of a punctured balloon. 

Pamela cups Harley’s cheek. “I meant everything I said and I promise I’ll say it a thousand more times in the future. But right now, I’m kind of in pain and it’s your turn to play doctor.”

Harley leans into the touch, closing her eyes against it for a few seconds before leaning forward and taking Pamela’s lips against her own. 

Helping her up, Harley leads them both outside. Every step feels like agony and Pamela holds her arm close against her body to avoid jolting it and sending the wildfire pain spreading. 

When they walk out of the warehouse, there’s carnage everywhere. Fires burn in various places, bodies litter the ground. Some good people. Some not. 

It’s hard to not feel like every droplet of blood is on her hands. She carries the weight of it on her shoulders, lets it weigh her down even more. 

When Selina had asked what she was willing to go to in order to get to the end, where a man like J didn’t own the streets or have predatory eyes watching from every dark corner, she couldn’t have fathomed this either.

Looking around at the cost of winning a battle, of winning a war, the victory feels hollow. While she’s not exactly walking out unscathed, Pamela still has her operation if she wants it. She has Harley. 

As they walk by the armored transport that Pamela knows contains Gordon and his men, she lays a hand on Harley gingerly and motions to the latch on the back. Sensing what she’s getting at, Harley pulls back with her mallet and begins to swing ferociously until the metal door dents then caves in.

A slit wide enough for them to see the cops zip-tied within it opens. Pamela meets Jim Gordon’s eyes.

“What have you done?” His voice is gritty, worn. His eyes are tired. He knows he will walk out into a mess and Gotham will demand answers. 

“What you should have done a long time ago,” Pamela levels him with an intense stare. 

“You think you’re any better? You’re poison to these streets, Isley. You may try to build the city up but at the same time, you’re running it down. Ruining it in other ways.” 

She’d like to combat that, but it’s essentially the truth. A very bitter, hard to swallow one. Her face seems to harden even more. “Tonight, turn on that new signal of yours. But you won’t be attending the meeting.”

“Goddamn you, Isley! You’ll get what’s coming to you!” Gordon shouts at her as she turns to walk away, the fingers of her good hand and arm lacing tightly with Harley’s to pull them away. “And don’t think I forgot about you either, Quinn!”

Harley flips him the bird as they walk away and shoots a grin over to Pamela. They both let a laugh rip through the night. Not like the way Harley has always had to, like Pamela has rarely done. 

It has the lightness of air, the possibility of beginning again. Of starting anew. 

\\\\\\-\\\\\

Pam refuses to tell Harley why they’re standing on top of the fucking roof GCPD, especially when she just murdered someone and Pam proceeded to annihilate most of J’s cronies with her own crew. Oh, and the whole drug thing. They’re both guilty of that. 

When it’s stripped down to the nuts and bolts of it, Harley is jittery as hell. Meeting the caped crusader by seeking him out instead of the other way around seems a little bent. 

There are a lot more things she’d like to do than end up in Blackgate, or worse Arkham. Right now, Harley isn’t sure which line she and Pam are exactly toeing. 

“When’s he supposed ta get here?” Harley asks, pacing again. Basically like the last time she got shot. Ugh. She wipes her brow and removes a little of the muggy Gotham night. 

“When he gets here,” Pam looks apologetic, would have probably shrug except her arm is tucked to her body in a sling. 

Harley knows she’s in a good bit of pain, but being one of the biggest narcos has its perks. She’s managed to procure herself enough painkillers to dose a horse. Not that she takes more than the allotted share. 

She closes her eyes and thinks of last night, of being able to gently remove Pam’s shirt while holding ice on her for the swelling. How she’d been able to get away with placing soft kisses along her good shoulder while simultaneously skimming a hand up to cup a voluptuous breast. 

How Pam had leaned back against the cold cubes and firmness of Harley’s hand. Had moaned despite her state, despite Harley coaxing her into the touch even though she shouldn’t have. 

“Getting me dressed up with no place to go,” Pam had admonished. 

“Baby, when that shoulder heals, I’m taking you to the stars,” had been the promise against Pam’s bare skin. 

Yeah, a good memory. One that gives her the chicken skin, all prickly and shoulder rolling because it’s so good to think about. 

“Where ya at, Harls?” Pam shatters Harley’s daydream with a smugness that about drives Harley to plant her mallet in the bat signal and bend Pam over it, shoulder be damned. 

“You know where,” Harley narrows her eyes. “Thinkin’ bout how I’d like to be under you instead of up here.” 

“I’m kind of down a hand,” Pam teases. 

“And yet you still have a thigh. Maybe could get my ride on,” Harley shrugs. 

“For the love of god, please stop talking,” Harley hears a whoosh of air and then his raspy voice. 

“Heya, Batsy,” Harley rolls her eyes and joins Pam’s side. She has half a mind to wrap her arm around the redhead’s waist but crosses her arms instead. 

Pam fixes the bat with a look. She’s so fuckin’ calm and in control that Harley is a tad in awe of her staring down a guy who could haul them both downstairs without much effort. 

“What do you want, Isley? You know very well that you should be at Blackgate. Maybe even Arkham for the stunt you pulled yesterday,” he grinds out. 

“How about I do you one better,” Pam says and Harley is struggling to figure out what this is all about before the cat is out of the bag. “I thought I wanted the city. I thought I wanted to cleave it at its knees and make it crawl to get back up. But that’s not what I want at all.”

“So you get rid of the most notorious drug kingpin in all of Gotham…” he stops when Pamela tilts her head with a sardonic look. “One of the most. And I figure you’d prefer _queen._ ”

Harley can’t help but grin. Yeah, Pammy is the Queen. She could have all of Gotham in the palm of her hand but if this meeting is fortuitous of anything, that’s not where this is going at all. 

She watches as Pamela smiles too and looks out across the nightscape of the city. “This town has too many people trying to play gods,” she turns to the cowled man in front of them. Harley sees him bristle. “There are too many monsters as well. I’m tired of being one.”

After this, she looks to Harley who feels her own heart thud in her chest. _For once I’m the choice. Someone is choosing me._ It’s selfish as hell to think but for always staying fairly beaten down, this feels too nice to ignore. 

Harley turns as the bat lets out a grunt. A grumble. Some sort of noise that doesn’t exactly instill confidence that she and Pam are getting off of this roof without being hauled in the back of the batmobile. 

“I’m giving you the city,” Pamela tells him. Harley remains quiet beside her, still unsure what’s happening. _Damn secrecy_. “My operations are being dissolved as we speak.”

“What!?” Harley turns quickly but then hears her male counterpart across from them.

“Giving the city back, you mean,” he says seriously. 

“Oh, darling. As if it were ever yours,” Pamela coos. 

Which is true. He’s never had it. If anyone has a chance though, Harley supposes it’s him. 

“Red, what do you mean? What about cleaning up Gotham and saving it from itself and all the millions of other reasons you did alla this in the first place?” 

Not that Harley has any compunctions about what has gone on in regards to what’s happened to J and his men. An end to a means there. But the other stuff?

Pamela’s face looks a bit weary and sighs. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d think I was crazy. That I didn’t mean what I said. That I didn’t stand by it.” She shakes her head. “This place is still deaf though. There are people listening, yes, but most don’t. And I’m tired of screaming.”

“So what’s worth giving up sitting on top of the world?” his voice asks behind them and Pam turns to him. 

Harley can feel her eyes track to where she’s standing. She shifts a little on her feet, leans against the metal of the huge light projector pointed at the sky. Pam’s voice is quiet when she speaks.

“I don’t think I have to say.”

She fixes him with a look again. “I never wanted to sit on top of everything and look down anyway, not really. I think I just wanted to be a part of it, not separate. But I don’t think I’ll ever fit right in Gotham. This place is for people like you.” 

Harley’s supposes love has a funny way of changing people. Not like she ever could have imagined gaining enough courage to stand alone by herself, to use the voice in her throat to tell someone exactly what the contents of her heart felt. 

This feels like a chance at that thing that everyone talks about and strives to have. Her own version of happiness. A shot at something she doesn’t know if she’s had in her entire life. 

The thought of the unknown is scary. Anyone would be a fool to not harbor at least a little fear. She doesn’t know what her life holds, what Pam’s does. What theirs look like when they come together. 

She doesn’t get a chance as Pam wraps her good hand around Harley’s waist and kisses her underneath the beaming bat light, the flicker of the city they’ve both raged inside of, fought for and then against, now feel primed and apt to walk away from. 

Harley is vaguely away of a cape fluttering away, of the wind rustling the strands of both of their hair as they continue to kiss on top of their slowly coming down to earth high. 

“What’s next?” Harley asks against Pam’s lips. 

She watches as Pam tilts her head. “I don’t know. You tell me, sweet pea.”

Choice. Pam’s giving it to her. Something J never could. Never did. What happens next is in her hands, affects both of them. 

“I think I know just the thing,” Harley murmurs, imagines kissing Pam again underneath the stars somewhere far beyond the smog of a Gotham sky.

Harley will take Pam where they burn. Where they can see them finally. 

**\---Epilogue---**

If there are origin stories, surely there are resolution ones too--ones where those who haven’t always played by the rules or who haven’t always gone about things in the best ways maybe get a win. 

Harley takes her where she knows, what she’s familiar with. If Pamela had any qualms about leaving Gotham, they are obliterated when they walk into the home they’ve purchased not far from where a tow-headed little girl walked the streets years ago. 

While the houses are still a little close for Pamela’s liking, theirs butts up against a lot where a condemned house was bulldozed long ago. Surprisingly, contractors had battled for ages over what to put there and stalled project after project left just enough to swoop in and make an offer they couldn’t refuse. 

So when they walk into their humble abode, Harley biting her lip as they look around, saying “So, what do you think?” all nervous and adorable, Pamela can’t help but kiss her roughly as they close the door to their place, their new life. 

She makes love to her on the wooden floors, their discarded clothes the only thing to comfort their backs and cradle their bodies as they cling to one another. 

They eat takeout from containers with their legs crossed and faint candlelight glowing. They laugh and dance to music as Harley’s phone pumps out a tune from its speaker, the cord dangling down to connect to an outlet. 

Pamela spins her, kisses her again because she can, and thinks that this is the only way to truly be living. It makes her heart feel crammed to the brim, overflowing. Leaking out happiness at the seams. 

Bensonhurst unfurls around them, or they around it. Pamela isn’t too sure. Harley paints the walls bright colors and Pamela digs a garden into the land beside their home. They each grow something at the same time—-Harley erects the essence of their life together and Pamela gives the world back a little of what it’s given her: life. 

Their lives together develop so naturally that it’s hard to remember they used to be other people. Sure, they get crossways sometimes because Harley is unabashed and Pamela finds sanctuary in solitude often. 

But they never let the things that come between them unravel them for good. They’ve both been on the other side of contentment, drowning in monotony. They’ve both had enough excitement to twist their life up into knots for good. 

So Pamela lets her garden grow just like Harley continues to do in her heart. She turns her face against the sun and basks in it, in the warmth. 

“When you said you wanted ta spend time with me today, this isn’t exactly what I thought you meant,” Harley grouses, throwing down a bag of fertilizer. Organic fertilizer. Pamela watches her nose scrunch and her tongue poke out of her lips. “Ugh. Fuckin’ gross.”

Pamela stands, brushing the dirt off of her knees and makes her way over to where Harley stands. She wraps around her, nuzzles the wet strands of hair at the nape of her neck. “Sexiest gardener ever,” she hums into Harley’s ear, bites at the lobe. 

“Alright you,” Harley wrestles with her, and they both fall to the ground, the vibrant verdant grass between them plush underneath their bodies.

They lay side by side for a few moments, looking up at the puffy whiteness of the clouds rolling lazily across the cerulean sky. Harley never lasts long with idleness though and rolls over onto Pamela, legs squeezing either of her hips and hands resting behind her on Pam’s thighs. 

“We are in the yard, in public, where other houses are very close to us,” Pamela warns. She doesn’t put much past Harley but she hopes sex in public is not one of them. That is until Harley playfully rotates her hips. 

“I was jus’ plannin’ on being innocent and then you had to take us to tha gutter,” Harley chides and leans down to nip Pamela’s skin exposed from where her collared shirt doesn’t touch. “Mmm, yeah, baby. If you taste like this right now, I can’t wait for later.”

And who says later has to actually be that? What’s stopping them from doing exactly what they want, when they want to? In any other world, in any other life, that would likely mean anarchy. In the one she and Harley have built, it’s possible. 

She can skip off into a house that’s become a home, touch Harley physically in the most intimate of ways and call it making love instead of having sex. Pamela is able to use terms of endearment that aren’t platonic or benign because Harley is hers—yes, in the possessive sense.

There’s something nice in being selfish for once too, in letting herself have some small sliver of happiness for once. She doesn’t know what the future holds but as long as she’s holding Harley, everything that has seemed out of kelter might end up somewhat okay. Maybe that’s something she can learn to live with.

Pamela gets to call her “girlfriend” to the entire world. Some day the word might change, could possibly morph into an even sweeter noun. She closes her eyes against the sun, against Harley’s bright eyes, and floats along on the idea. 

When she opens them again, Harley is looking down at her with uncontained wonder, spilling over love. Pamela touches her check, reaches down, and threads their fingers together for the moment, hopefully forever. 

“I love you, Harley. Now take me home,” Pamela tells her. 

A bird sings nearby. The breeze ruffles the blonde locks of Harley’s hair. Pamela’s heart soars with the wind. They stand, interlocked digits never coming pulled apart. As they make their way back, their lips find one another in the only way Pamela has ever found peace. She’d assume much the same for Harley. When she and Harley are against each other for what feels like the first time and the hundredth all at once, Pamela has but one fluttering thought: _Forever has never felt so damn good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, thanks to all who have read/commented. Hopefully, this is a satisfying conclusion to the tale. I've got other stories in the works (another AU with Harley and Ivy teaching at Gotham U) so stay tuned!


End file.
